


Let the Games Begin

by Cendree, Fangirl0



Series: Transdimentional Constants [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst, Cults, Fist Fighting, Humor, Jealousy, M/M, Rocketboarding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 03:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cendree/pseuds/Cendree, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirl0/pseuds/Fangirl0
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel to "Pilfering a Heart".<br/>Jake and Dirk finally meet face to face in their session of Sburb. Can they work together or will Dirk say too much about his knowledge of what had transpired with Brobot and ruin their friendship in the process?<br/>And are they bad enough dudes to contend with Jake's world, full of ruins and pitfalls?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Jake and Dirk meet face to face.

**Author's Note:**

> This is also based on an rp we did before proper information came out on some of the subjects contained in it, placing it even further in AU territory. The Lands all have different names and the Consorts are all still alive.  
> We'll be posting this one at regular intervals instead of all at once, since we're still working on the third story to this series.  
> I also feel that, now that I thought of it, I should point out that this one's more a character study than romance, since they have a lot of things to work out together. Any encounters over serious romantic inclinations will be in Part 3, but there's some important stuff going on between them in this part.  
> Thanks for reading so far and we hope you like it!

It’s been a couple of hours since what Dirk has started to ironically call “the incident.” After the incredibly smooth way he handled Brobot’s deactivation, his interaction with English had been minimal. There was a significant span of time when Dirk had no idea what Jake was up to— though he assumed it was rabbit related. And after Dirk stared at a useless, static-filled stream for longer than he ever would admit, Jake finally contacted him and joined the game.

In Sburb, English deployed all the required objects, built upwards, attempted to prototype, and basically did whatever was necessary. He was a perfect server. And that was all fucking well and good except. Well... It wasn’t what Dirk was expecting. There wasn’t an ounce of derp in the extremely to-the-point conversations they had while Jake learned the controls. He didn’t even balk at the technobabble, surprising Dirk by immediately adopting the correct terms for all the game constructs.

And for some reason (big goddamn mystery there), all that made Dirk feel like shit. And so instead of getting all pansied up about his feelings, he just focused on being as serious about the game as Jake. So their conversations were nothing but flat instructions and mild praises. No sign of the usual bromance, the typical teasing between two best bros, and though it kind of sucked for Dirk, there was no fucking way that Dirk was going to try to push anything at all with Jake (especially not related to any sort of feelings he might harbor).

“Jane. I’m going to go investigate the next gate,” Dirk coolly points up to the fourth gate, orange and swirling above their heads. He feels oddly nervous as he does this, though it doesn’t show. He’s essentially ditching Jane on Land of Beat and Strings, which is perhaps a dick move, even though he knows she can handle herself, plus she has Lil' Seb for backup. And Roxy really could use some help... He can tell himself a thousand times that he’s doing this for the game and maybe he will start to believe it eventually.

But it is still a lie. He’s doing it for himself.

Because the old-timey asshole he is overwhelmingly enamored with decided to go off to look for treasure or something equally idiotic. If Dirk sounds angry or bitter, it’s definitely not because he’s worried about the fact that if Jake dies while exploring his ridiculous and dangerous planet (which is fucked-upedly filled with incredibly vertical and treacherous cliffs and mountains just littered with skeletal remains— basically Jake’s adventure paradise, making it pretty much the worst thing ever for Dirk to think about), there is no dream self to revive. And the last time Jake contacted him was much too long ago for Dirk to be sitting around calmly. So he’s heading to LOSAE and he’s going to find Jake, hopefully alive, and maybe he can clear the air between them or something while he’s there. Fuck.

“Normally I would pass that shit over to your valiant detective skills but it looks like Rox could use some of that plucky lass enthusiasm channeled into building her up. I’ll leave it up to you,” he says, pulling from his sylladex the sweet rocket skateboard he alchemized.

“Alright, Mister Strider. I’ll be here and you know how to get in touch with me."

Dirk nods once before hopping on the board, snatching some truly unreal air as he pchoos up and into the gate.

Meanwhile, Jake is taking a break from exploring his world, the Land of Skulls and Elevation. It's kind of an awesome place to be. It's all full of cliffs and skulls (as stated in the title) and there appear to be a lot of hidden caves and such. Kind of fascinating and, if he weren't so busy just figuring out his next move, he'd explore far more than what he has to get acquainted with the area. Perhaps he should actually contact the others? If they're going to win the game, they need to have some sort of communication going on.

Feeling oddly... nostalgic- that can't be the right word, since it's only been a couple of hours- over what happened before the game, Jake actually pulls the pointy shades out of his own sylladex and places them on, logging on to Pesterchum to see if anyone decides to communicate with him. Then again, he doesn't think he's been off for too long, but he can't say he's been really keeping the concept of regular chatting in mind. There's been a lot to do.

Dirk comes through on the other side of the gate with some kind of sick 360 kickflip stunt.

So this is LOSAE. Cool. It looks like there are about 5 million caves and huge craggy rocks that Jake could be hiding behind or dead in or something. That’s just fucking great.

He starts to point his board towards the nearest deadly mountain when, within his sunglasses, there's a sudden notice; the arrow of a chum signing on Pesterchum. He freezes as he watches the name golgothasTerror turn white and get a smiley face next to it. Jake. Dirk tries to ignore the relief that floods through him. Why the fuck was he so worried anyway? (Oh right, because it’s Jake.) And, oh. The feed is back. Jake must have decided to put on the glasses because Dirk is getting video now. It just shows more mountains and rocks; not enough to show him exactly where Jake is.

He should probably just contact Jake now. Find where he is. It will be difficult to meet up otherwise, given the layout of this planet. He’s hesitating though. Normally Dirk would have planned out this meeting to an extreme degree. But he’s being unusually spontaneous about all of this and he doesn’t really know what he’s going to say when he sees Jake face to face in person for the first time. It's a little stressful.

Well, whatever. He can play it chill right now, at least.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering golgothasTerror [GT] \--

TT: English.  
TT: What’s your 20?

Yeah, okay. He admits he is being a little cagey by not telling Jake where he is.

GT: Erm. Im not sure specifically?  
GT: Past being in my world the land of skulls and elevation.

Jake glances around, the video feed clearly showing such, not that he knows that in particular. Plenty of rock formations are in view so perhaps some unique ones can point the way to him.

GT: Im not really sure what else to say about it.  
GT: Where the devil is everyone? Are things on the up and up?

Dirk carefully watches the feed for a suitable landmark as Jake moves and looks around.

There. There is a huge boulder close by that looks like a smuppet ass. That will be pretty recognizable. Also a small cave. And it looks like Jake is standing on a wide plateau that dips in slightly on top with less steep sides than other places. Almost like a hill that got punched in at the peak, only it’s pretty fucking high up for a hill. Still, where Jake is currently is nowhere near close to the upper heights that these mountains can reach. He looks like he’s practically low elevation compared to the other instances of monstrous geography in this place.

TT: Alright.  
TT: Jane is in LOBAS, building up Roxy’s house.  
TT: Rox is a little behind schedule in terms of number of gates entered, so I have decided that taking a short pause to allow our lovable drunk to catch-up to us will be the best way to proceed.  
TT: Other than that, everything is going as smoothly as ever.

Strider thinks about telling Jake where he is but then decides against it. He does, however, start fly-boarding through the mountains, looking for a smuppet butt.

TT: What have you been doing?  
TT: You were offline for a while.

It's best to keep things short and basic with Jake for now, Dirk thinks.

GT: I assume you mean after i made it into the session?  
GT: Mostly exploring this place since it appears safe around here.

Jake leaves out the fact that the whole Brobot thing's kind of thrown him off a bit, even if he's been attempting to the best of his abilities not to get too distracted by it or anything else. This game is going to be dangerous and he needs to focus on finding his metaphorical footing and winning without losing anyone else. Oh, but that's something weird, seeing Dirk say that he's been offline for a while. It hasn't been very long, has it?

GT: Fuck! I just took a peek at the time on these infernal sunglasses and i didnt think i was off for THAT long! No wonder you sent a line that quick.

That's a bit embarrassing to realize. Jake should be far more attentive than that for the sake of his friends and for Jade. Now's particularly not the time to start slipping. He needs to keep his head in the here and now instead of exploring or reminiscing.

Strider gives a little sigh as he reads Jake’s obviously surprised reaction to the amount of time he’s been offline. Of course the little dork didn’t realize that while he was off shitting around doing God knows what, he had been making everyone (read: especially Dirk) really worried.

TT: It’s fine.  
TT: No one really expected you to be doing anything less than wandering off without warning on one of your interminable quests for adventures and shit.  
TT: Someone would have to be really fucking stupid to believe that putting yourself into grave peril is not a thing that you would do,  
TT: Especially given your lack of a dream-self.  
TT: There was absolutely no chance that you wouldn’t be putting your only remaining life at risk by fucking around on some mountain peak without communication.

After he sends those messages, Dirk immediately regrets it. They make it sound like he actually gives a shit, which, of course, he does but it isn’t the time for that.

He had given a lot of thought to how Brobot beat him out in the Strider race for Jake’s heart and that really fucking sucked. It hurt and made him feel vulnerable. And then, of course, shit got more messed up by Dirk’s insistence on Brobot’s deactivation. So he made up his mind to try to be as aloof as possible and stay far away from making it sound like he cared about anything... and those messages just kind of killed that. Ugh, fuck feelings.

He leans low on his rocketboard, gaining speed as he skims over the mountains. Up ahead there is a cleft rock that looks promising as a smuppet rump. He urges the board to go faster— alright, there is the cave, and—

There he is. Dirk unintentionally jerks back at the sight of Jake, bringing the rocketboard to a wobbily hover that Dirk has to work to recover from.

He's just standing there, in the middle of a mountain range, clothing looking a little dirty from exploring but he seems fine otherwise—

He is wearing Brobot’s shades. Dirk knew he would be but the sight still makes him feel kind of sick. Strider stands on his red board, hesitant about his next move. The boy isn’t looking up at the sky at the moment but Dirk still wonders if Jake has seen him.

GT: UGH im not a kid or something dagnabbet. I can take care of myself.  
GT: In fact i

Jake appears slightly startled by something and accidentally sends the incomplete message. It becomes fairly obvious what just surprised him when he looks up at the bright red rocketboard hovering in the air. With Dirk standing on it.

GT: Sorry hold on.

He slips the pointy red shades up and away from his dark green eyes (as well as his regular glasses, which makes the whole thing look a tad ridiculous), staring up at Dirk in obvious astonishment, as if it's difficult to believe he's really there. He slips the shades back on, despite how ridiculous it looks, and types up a new message. He doesn't look angry and the message doesn't appear irritatingly chastising, thankfully, but this will probably be a bit of an awkward thing.

GT: How long have you been there???  
TT: Not that long.

Dirk watches Jake from the distance for a little longer, definitely not trying to gather his shit or anything like that. After a moment, he points the board down and approaches the plateau, looking pretty awesome despite the fact than he feels kinda wrecked inside.

When the board gets close enough, he does a bitchin' powerslide to a stop in front of Jake then steps off onto the rocky ground as if it's no big (hint: it isn’t). How can anyone even be that cool?

He kicks the rocket into his sylladex and calmly regards Jake, attempting to ignore the weird ache that seeing Brobot’s shades on his goofy face makes him feel and the fact that this is the first time they have ever seen each other in person. Then he says the only thing that a coolkid like Dirk could say.

“Sup, Jake?”

Jake responds with a goofy little lopsided grin at actually being able to meet one of his best friends in person, not to mention the first human he can think of seeing in person since ever, and takes off the ridiculous shades so that he can genuinely talk face to face. It's almost unreal, to finally see the actual Dirk Strider in front of him. He pats his friend's shoulders in a boisterous greeting that shouldn't surprise Dirk in the least. "Bro! Holy shit, I can't believe it's really you!"

He's absolutely beaming at seeing him in the flesh. Jake's seen a picture or two of everyone, if only because of how prominent Jane is, then Roxy and Dirk had to send photos online like Jake to even things out. It was all a bit cagey, he he knew he could trust them. Regardless, Dirk had the ridiculous shades, the fluffy hair that looks like it's from a frigging cartoon; he really did design a resemblance with... Brobot. He quickly pushes that thought away, not wanting to think about what he had to do for the sake of this game. He should stay happy because this is his best bro right in front of him. He can't wait to meet everyone.

Removing Brobot’s shades helped settle Dirk slightly... but then being pat and grinned at and seeing how excited Jake was— hm.

This is weird.

Instead of feeling happy about the way Jake is treating him, Dirk feels suddenly and intensely guilty and it’s difficult for him to figure out why. Is it because Jake had been alone on his island without physical interaction with humans and the only person Jake could actually touch was Dirk’s robot self and he went and made Jake destroy it? Is it because of Brobot? Is he feeling like he’s stepping on someone else’s territory? Or maybe he’s guilty that he’s making Jake confront Brobot’s human likeness so soon after deactivating him?

Dirk knows pretty much what went down between the robot and the human, but Jake seems so happy right now. Maybe he wasn’t as affected by the whole fiasco as Dirk thought. Or was Jake hiding it? Should he bring it up? Whatever, he shouldn’t be dwelling on this still since Jake is right in front of him and grinning that dumb grin and that’s good, right? Right. Okay. 

“Now don’t cream yourself, English,” he says with just a tiny hint of humor in his flat tone, before softly bumping his fist into Jake’s arm to return the greeting, momentarily distracting himself from the ridiculous feelings monologue in his head but Dirk can still barely bring himself to look at Jake’s face. “I can understand how exciting and overwhelming it must be to see me in person for the first time. But please, let’s cool our jets, tiger.”

For a brief moment, Jake looks almost surprised as it really sinks in that he's touching another human being, feeling Dirk give him a goodnatured little bump on the arm. He quickly reigns in his surprise, not wanting for Dirk to think he's weird... or at least, weirder than he already thought, not that he can really say much with all of his bizarre puppet talk and all. Jake also carefully lets go of Dirk's shoulders, secretly a bit reluctant to because, well, it feels good to actually be able to feel someone else. Perhaps later on, they can have a friendly little round of wrestling? That would be smashing!

"So, what's the plan, Bro? I mean, I'm bandying to do what needs to be done to hurry this blasted game up," Jake says. He kind of assumes they'll probably end up waiting together for Jane and Roxy to catch up, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Dirk's been the man with the plan so far. "Not that I don't enjoy this opportunity to see everyone and experience such an enormous adventure and all. I'd just rather not have this game deprive us of anyone else."

Dirk forces himself to look at Jake’s face when he draws away, slamming a mental fist into his brain for the way it immediately (and sickeningly) starts to compare the way Jake looks now to when he was sleeping, courtesy of the video feed from Brobot. Listening to Jake speaking is a welcome distraction.

“As I said earlier, we’re waiting for our dear lush, Miss Lalonde, to stumble her way upwards. Jane is building for her as we speak and I’ll be in touch when we’re finally ready to all join up in a truly awesome blaze of friendship and badassery, the likes of which will surely ignite unimaginable panic in our enemies.”

Strider looks around, trying to plan on the spot what to do besides awkwardly stare at Jake and stand around like an asshole. He definitely should have thought this out better before coming over here. “We can explore and, as the manly support team, try to stockpile some more grist for the building efforts of the ladies. If that sort of thing interests you. Unless you have already adventured the shit out of this place, which, knowing you, would not surprise me in the least.”

Jake shrugs at that, glancing at the mountainous region around them. His exploration hasn't been quite up to his usual adventuring standards despite the excitement of being somewhere genuinely new. Even with his aim to finish the game quickly and moderately safely, it was a bit difficult, to an extent, to keep his focus. His home is still around but the island is presumably done for, what with the destruction of the world and all, and he's still dealing with the fact that his friend and prospective lover, Brobot, is deactivated and doesn't intend for that state to change.

At least it should be easier to distract himself now that one of his other friends is on the scene. Hell, they can even have some sort of adventure together, exploring this place. He won't have to think about any of the unpleasantness from starting the game now that Dirk's here. "Um. To tell you the truth, I've only explored a marginal area so far, I think. This place is frigging huge."

“Marginal? C'mon, bro. I came here expecting to see untold precious treasures and a metric fuckton of angry gods with hella desecrated ruins, courtesy of Jake English. You've been slacking on the job, Indy.” Dirk teases, before quickly turning away from Jake when he shoots his ridiculous overbite smile that makes his heart hurt in the weirdest combination of sadness and love. God fuck damn shit, why is he acting like such a pansy asshole being all tsundere around Jake like this? He is abso-fucking-lutely not going to pull this shit again. Dirk stares hard at the plush rump rock (anything but Jake’s face) for a long minute and in his usual systematic and precise way, gathers all the crap strewn around his mind and tucks it neatly away in some dark recess to not think about.

Jake perks up a little, smiling again in that oddly charming way as he starts to concentrate more on the idea of actually hanging out with his best bro and his impending meeting with Roxy and Jane. "It should be leagues better now that someone else is accompanying my efforts here."

Alright. Dirk’s all business now, so he turns back to Jake and whips out his rocketboard.


	2. In which some rad bros search for adventure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Fangirl0, sort of the person in this dynamic duo that appointed themselves as the official fic poster:  
> Alright, I broke down and had to put up Chapter 2 as well because I'm not a very patient person. The rest is going to actually be posted in intervals like I had mentioned before.  
> On to some spiffing adventure, though!

“Let's not stand around like timid little bitches for any longer. Enough of that. We're going to show this world we mean business. We're going to ravish the shit out of it. Every virgin mountaintop will lose its maidenhead to our conquistador ways. Every rock will swoon at our panache and swagger. And you can fondle the skulls or whatever, since I know you're into that,” Dirk says with a playful head-jerk to bring Jake over, as he steps on the now hovering deck. He anchors the floating board with a foot, watching through the dark lenses, waiting for his best friend to hop on. "Let’s explore, English."

Jake can't help but laugh at the verbose and frankly ridiculous description of the mischief they'll be getting into. This is more like it! He hops on the rocketboard, wobbling slightly and carefully grasping Dirk's shoulders temporarily to find his balance. There's no way he's going to cling to Strider's waist like some little kid when his friend steps entirely on as well, though that's going to be his first instinct with this unfamiliar shifting under his feet. He manages to stand up on his own and motions for Dirk to join him. "Well then, let's get moving! This world isn't going to explore itself and we're just the chaps to do it!"

Dirk purses his lips when Jake starts to wobble on the board and has to grab his shoulders, shooting one of his own arms out to catch Jake if he starts to fall. But he doesn’t. He actually appears pretty stable now. Besides, he’s definitely eager to get on with this, so.

Cautiously Dirk starts to step on, knowing that adding his weight is going to make the board dangerously unbalanced for a moment. “Watch yourself, Jake.”

He quickly shifts his feet to stabilize the floating board, positioning himself in front of Jake. It’s much more difficult to balance with the mass of Jake added to the equation but Dirk is a kickass boarder so he manages with minimal wiggling around. Once settled, he turns to look at Jake with a straight face, shades covering any sort of feelings his orange eyes might be showing. “Alright. If you need to hold on, Jake, please do so. Don’t be a stubborn asshole about this. The last thing we need is for our Page to take a skydive.”

Once again, Dirk was sort of disgusted with himself for being such a worrywart, so when he turned around and brought the board up, it might have been a little faster than he intended to go for the sake of Jake’s balance.

"Ah!" Well, so much for not clinging to Dirk's waist. That sudden imbalance had him holding tightly to his friend for the sake of not falling onto his ass like a doofus. It hasn't put too much on a damper on his excitement, though, and he gladly prepares for the upcoming ascent. Maybe he'd have been a bit more indignant about all of the worrying if there wasn't clearly a grain of truth in there, considering that he almost fell down already while only a few feet off the ground because of one turn and change in the leveling of the rocketboard.

Jake clears his throat, trying to regain some of his rugged manliness after that wimpy display. "Well. Erm. Time to sally forth, Strider!"

He winces just slightly at that line since even he can tell that one was corny. That was almost as bad as "Let's mosey!" or something.

Strider’s eyebrow shoots up at the “sally forth” but Jake can’t see it so its derisive impact is lost. He continues to urge the board up, this time at a much smoother rate, trying to play it cool with Jake’s arms around him. It’s not that difficult. Dirk’s always cool. But to say that he didn't notice the position of Jake's body in relation to his own would be an outright fucking lie.

He gracefully leans and the rocketboard turns towards the nearest mountain while still steadily increasing in altitude. He figures they can edge the mountains and look for interesting things along the range. “You okay?” It seems like Jake has gained his balance now but Dirk feels the need to check anyway after that near fall.

"I'm perfectly alright over here," Jake says, his arms wrapped loosely around Dirk's waist, ready to tighten if he starts going off-kilter again. "I'd say you should concentrate on keeping this contraption right-side up and I'll fret about staying on it."

He cranes his neck to take a look at the environment around them. It's kind of a spectacular sort of view from as high up as they've already gotten. It's all very majestic with so many tall mountains around them, reaching up towards the sky.

“Man, what. Are you doubting my sweet shredding skills? Is that seriously what you are doing?” Dirk cranes his own neck around to give Jake his best seriously offended face. Of course, Jake is busy peering all around, looking really amazed. Dirk has to agree that LOSAE is actually a really beautiful planet. It almost brings a smile to his lips. It doesn’t, but almost. “Completely laughable. I’m the motherfucking boss of this ‘contraption,’ as you so archaically chose put it.”

He shifts on the board again and it shakes dangerously for a moment before popping up in the air in a little bunny hop. Dirk leans forward and the rockets flare, rapidly propelling them forward. The mountain wind rushing over his face and whipping around his body exhilarates him, encouraging him to urge to board even faster. He had adjusted to Jake’s weight and now felt completely stable and capable of pulling all sorts of sweet stunts.

Jake grips Dirk a bit tighter when the rocketboard wiggles unstably under them for a moment. Dang, that was an uncomfortable move. Normally, he'd totally rub this fact into Strider's infuriatingly cool face, but he'd rather not get into a friendly spat while they're in the air on a hovering death-machine.

“Ya best start worryin' the hell outta stayin' on because you done riled up the skate king, English,“ he said with a purposefully heavy twang. Emphasizing his normally very mild accent was one of the many ironic tricks he occasionally pulled. Now for a literal trick; he swings the board close to the nearest cliff-face and tilts so that, for a second, the bottom of the board scrapes over the rocks. Then he rocks back into a vertical position and does a sweet ollie. In the fucking air. How is that even possible? The answer is one word: Strider. SO COOOOOOOL.

A slight flush spreads over Jake's face at the sound of that drawling accent, even if some of the terms are ridiculously cheesy. Why the hell does he have to have such a nice voice? That's just an insane thing to have when he's already very decidedly awesome. The cool maneuvers would be very impressive in particular if Jake weren't standing on the board with him. As it is, Jake clings even tighter to his best bro with a startled yelp.

Dirk may or may not be also slightly blushing because of Jake’s clinging. Good thing neither of them can see the other’s face. Strider might lose all the cool points he has. Anyway, it’s probably just a sunburn or something on Strider. Or like, the air stinging his face or something. I-it’s not like he likes Jake or anything!

The yelp from Jake cools Dirk’s jets and the rocketboard’s as well, since it seems to be slowing down now to a more leisurely pace than the breakneck speed it was flying at before. Dirk refrains from attempting any more wicked tricks since it is clear that Jake is kind of freaking out. “You alright back there, English?”

"Of course I am," Jake replies, quickly regaining his nerve now that there's no more crazy stunts going on. He even loosens his hold slightly again. "I'm perfectly fine over here. You know my adventurous nature and this is absolutely nothing for someone of either of our levels of awesome. Seriously, to think I'd be unnerved by small potatoes like this."

A little bit of turbulence has him clinging again and he can practically sense the smug shit-eating smirk on Dirk's face. "Ahem. I'm fine."

Jake lets out a resigned little sigh and decides to continue holding onto Strider a bit tighter since being held up by a rocket-propelled hunk of metal does make him a tad nervous. He watches the mountains as they pass by, keeping his eyes open for anything of interest. It really is a nice view despite the very precarious location they happen to be standing on.

Dirk snorts out a laugh, a shit-eating smirk absolutely overtaking his face. Jake has excellent douchebag senses it seems.

“No shame in admitting that you’re scared, Jake. I promise I won’t tell anyone about your less than fearless handling of these spuds,” his voice most definitely conveying his amusement at his friend’s reaction. Of course, now that Dirk thought about it, Jake had probably never even flown before. Maybe he should less of a dick about it. “S’not like there are any blue bitches here you need to impress with your flying skills anyway.“

It’s always easy to tease Jake but it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the way he is being held on to. Dirk looks quietly down at the arms wrapped around him and tries not to lean back into Jake’s embrace. Jake isn’t trying to be romantic and Dirk knows that. He isn’t being hugged, he’s being used for balance, and he reminds himself of this when he starts thinking about the warmth of the body against his back or how ridiculously romantic this could potentially be. It’s like some cheesy chick flick or a Disney princess film or something. Dammit. He starts softly humming “A Whole New World” in a valiant attempt to ironic himself out of thinking too much about the current situation with Jake.

"I'm not scared. That's a load of cockamamie," Jake grumbles, resting his cheek on his friend's shoulder and being a bit of a petulant kid about it.

The bespectacled boy quickly notices the humming and begins listening closely to the song. He snorts in amusement when he finally catches it since of course he remembers what that song comes from. Considering he adores everything cinema, to a ridiculously indiscriminate level, there's no question he'd be able to identify the romantic flight song from a classic. "You are such a doofus."

The comment doesn't stop Jake from humming along a little because, damn, that song is catchy and upbeat and just fun. This a pretty comfortable moment right now, considering how abruptly the game began, and he can't help but relax and watch the scenery.

Dirk freezes when he feels Jake press his cheek against his shoulder, the black hair of his friend brushing against his neck, which tickles. Also it is really fucking adorable.

And when he starts humming along— who even gave Jake permission to be that cute? It’s ridiculous. Strider breathes deeply to chill and sneaks a single quick corner-of-the-eye look at the goofy faced boy who is calmly staring at the surrounding mountains and humming along, apparently completely at ease.

Now the best part of the song is coming up, better watch out Jake. Dirk takes the rocketboard on a long dip and suddenly breaks out of the hum to cover the dashing thief prince's part of the song (that's right, Jake, you're the Jasmine here). “Don’t you dare close your eyes...~”

Holy shit, Dirk is a terrible singer. He doesn’t seem to care at all though. Too much of a badass to be embarrassed by his piss-poor singing of ballads from Aladdin. The board snakes through the air. “Now Jake is shrieking in terror.~” Wait, hey! Those aren’t the words!

His replacement lyrics did fit, though, until the board levels out and Jake pants for air in place of the screaming. He's holding onto Dirk ridiculously tightly now and not loosening his hold despite no longer plummeting at a horrifying speed that he had no control over. "Holy fucking goddamn frigging... Don't do that!"

He would give Dirk a good drubbing over the noggin if the coolguy wasn't still piloting the rocketboard and if Jake weren't so terrified of letting go or even loosening his grip now. He doesn't particularly trust the board, even if he does trust that Strider would never really seriously injure him or anything on purpose. He glances around for anything of interest they might be able to land for.

“Do what?” Dirk asks, all cool and innocent while straightening out the board for the sake of Jake’s heart. He can feel it thrumming against him like a frightened rabbit due to the Jake English death grip that has their bodies tightly smooshed together. The orange-eyed boy figures he’s probably fucked with the dude enough for now. And he already pretty much showed him the world, and took him over, sideways, and under and all that. Might as well land now.

Dirk doesn’t bother letting Jake reply to his smart-ass douchemuffin question, knowing his friend is both terrified and bristling, making it likely that the punching will begin shortly.

“Hey, calm down. I’m not going to pull any more stunts, okay? Best bros promise. I’ll start the descent, nice and easy, just for you, Jake. Just tell me where exactly you wanna land.” They had traveled a considerable distance over the planet. The mountains here different from the ones Dirk saw earlier, now a little less steep and covered with thick vegetation instead of bare rock, vaguely reminiscent of Jake’s island jungle. It looked like there might be waterfalls and rivers and caves and shit that would hopefully appeal to Jake’s kink for adventure.

Jake notices the base of a mountain near the vegetation and that it appears to have a carved entrance there. That's certainly something that catches his eye. It's probably some ruins and he's just itching to desecrate the shit out of them! He reluctantly pulls an arm from Dirk's waist to point out the spot. "How about there first?"

Dirk looks to where Jake points and can see the apparent ruins, probably ripe for defiling. Of course that’s what Jake will want to go explore. No surprises there.

"You got it, Captain English,” Dirk says as he angles the board to bring them down as gently and safely as he knows how.

Captain English was probably not the best choice for teasing name-calling, but he honestly didn’t know that his robotic counterpart might have used that same name only a little earlier. If he had known, he absolutely would not have used it. Alas, this was one of the problems of not having full access to Brobot’s memories— not that Dirk really minded. He was almost positive that regardless of how curious he might be about what actually happened in those blank spots, he never wanted to actually watch the encrypted data. He saw enough when he was treated to the footage of Brobot in bed with a peacefully sleeping Jake.

It's certainly awkward for Jake hearing that playful little nickname again and he ends up burying his face in Dirk's shoulder for a moment, trying to stop from thinking about Brobot and mourning at a time like this. It wouldn't do to start getting all overemotional in front of Strider, particularly if he found out what Jake's damage is in this case. His friend wouldn't understand, thankfully ignorant of what went on between Jake and his creation (or at least so far as Jake knows). They land carefully and Jake hops off of the board, elated to stand on solid ground again.

Seeing the ruins close up quickly distracts Jake from the nagging sadness of his loss and he's smiling again, not that Strider really got to see anything depressed. Jake walks up to the carved entrance into the mountain and carefully touches the large carved "doorway". It looks very appropriately blocky and solid in its style. "I've heard the other worlds have indigenous creatures residing in them. Do you think there might be some mucking about in here?"

Dirk feels vaguely curious about the sudden face-hiding. He’s, of course, not stupid to the whole Brobot/Jake relationship and wonders if he might have triggered some memory or something that made Jake feel the need to do that. That thought makes him concerned that perhaps Jake is purposefully hiding his feelings for the sake of keeping Dirk in the dark about what happened between the him and robot, since he is unaware that Dirk already knows to a certain extent.

And now they’re on the ground and he can see Jake’s face— it’s cheery again— which kind of makes Strider more suspicious that there are some hidden emotions brewing under the surface. He stares hard at Jake, contemplating and looking for a legit sign of the feelings Dirk thinks are lurking. He’s unsure how to bring his concern up, especially with Jake playing like there’s nothing wrong.

“On my world, there were little orange alligators running around. I’d say it’s probable that you’d have something similar. And we can go in there and stir up shit if they aren’t, like the two bad bros we are.”

"Then I guess caution is the best policy here? Were the alligators friendly sorts of fellows?" Jake asks, sort of peeking into the large opening. There appear to be lights in there, but not much to see as far as he can tell. All of the interesting shit must be farther in.

“Sure. They were chill as long as you weren’t stupid as fuck and let them attempt to roast you,” Dirk replies offhandedly as he brushed past Jake to examine slightly deeper in the cave. Looks like the game constructed torches along the walls, which was handy. The cave seems like it might go pretty far into the mountain though.

He turns back to Jake and waits to see if Mr. Short-shorts is going to lead the expedition, being the one always ravenous for adventure. “You want to get on with this, Captain? I bet there is just tons of priceless shit in there just waiting to be acquired. Maybe there’ll be skulls and spiders and tombs too, eh? Like the Cave of English Fetishes or something.”

Jake looks pretty damn excited about exploring but his excitable grin fades ever so slightly at the joking "captain" title popping up. It's so stupid for something like that to make him think back to Brobot, but it was during their final moments together and just bound to get him thinking about it again.

"Absolutely. I'm ready to get this exploration on the move. We're so up to the task of meeting whatever resides here or pilfering some genuinely spiffing loot to help us along, so no point in frittering away our time. Let's show these ruins who's boss." He motions into the ruins and quickly walks along to distract himself again.

There it is. Dirk definitely sees it this time. Jake is bottling up shit. The way he is now, taking off like lightning into the ruins, shows it, too. Fuck. He knew it. And it was the Captain nickname that triggered it, he is almost positive. Dirk’s chest tightens at this, unable to stop himself from wondering what the context was for Brobot choosing that nickname. Jesus. This is the worst.

“Alright. Just lead the way, Capt— English.“ He manages to catch himself there, though half of the word still escapes. He watches Jake’s back to see if there is any reaction to the bit that escaped his mouth to see if he was right in his assumption about Captain being a trigger word.

Then Dirk follows after Jake with way too many thoughts in his head, trying to keep a good space in between them. His shades were making it much more difficult to walk in the tunnel than it needed to be— he wasn’t going to take them off, but his footing was definitely shoddy and he nearly fell more than once and had to play it off like no big deal.

Jake appears to falter at the nickname for the briefest moment. Damn, he feels pitiful right about now, thinking so much about Brobot when he had been told by the guy himself not to dwell on it and focus on the game. It's hard, though, just trying to push through without a thought of him after what happened. Perhaps later on, he can ask for a moment alone to actually reflect and get this out of his system?

He hears the slight stumbling behind him from Dirk trying to navigate with his shades on. Jake turns around to look at his best bro and wait for him to catch up. "Are you alright back there, Bro? The lighting isn't exactly spectacular here."

“I’m fine,” Dirk insists in his cool monotone before he immediately trips again while approaching the waiting Jake, knocking his face kind of painfully into his friend’s shoulder. He can feel his coolness drop considerably after that graceful move and his shades are dislodged in the process but they were being a useless piece of shit anyway so he ends up just tucking them away. Wow, the cool-levels are really plummeting, but at least he can see better. 

Of course, now he isn’t so sure that’s a good thing since Dirk can see Jake’s eyes clearly and they look especially sad in the flickering torchlight.

“God fucking dammit,” he grumbles, but whether it's because he tripped or because of the internal struggle with feelings and shit isn’t clear.

Jake rubs his shoulder after the impact with Dirk's unsurprisingly hard head. He tries to bring some levity to the situation by saying, "At least the sunglasses are off now. I'd probably have just as much luck trying to navigate this dark environment with my glasses OFF."

Strider doesn't appear to be hurt past massive frustration over looking a bit uncool or something, which is absurd to Jake but whatever. It's immensely difficult to get a correct reading on the color of Dirk's eyes in the low torchlight, but he feels oddly relieved that they aren't red at the least. Jake would never compare his best friend to the mechanical protector made for him but it's nice not to see eyes of the same color despite that. It puts him a bit more at ease.

There might have been a bit more irritated noisemaking since his head kind of ached now but Dirk seems to recover his awesome quickly and falls back into his deadpan.

“The sunglasses were on for your protection, Jake. Taking off the shades is like opening Pandora’s Box— except instead of releasing calamity onto the world, I just release it onto the hearts of everyone I look at. Bitches can’t handle the intense resplendence of my eyes. I crush souls with this gilded gaze. In fact, you might not want to look at me," Dirk says, before directing his own looking away from Jake. He didn’t have any problems with people knowing his weird eye color or anything- it's just easier on his emotions (which were much more difficult to hide when not wearing shades) when he didn’t have to stare at Jake’s face. He pulled it off like it was some sort of dramatic irony rather than something totally tsundere though. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you because of me.”

That last thing was Dirk speaking completely honestly but his favorite brand of irony was based on veiling and twisting the reality so the flat, yet somehow soap opera-like, delivery he used helped cover the true feelings behind that sentence. And anyway, it was a little late for statements like that. It would have been nice to say before rather than after putting Jake through emotional turmoil.

"Ha ha. Cut the dramatics, Strider," Jake says with friendly smile and pat on the back. He at least seems amused with Dirk's ridiculous little spiel. "I know you wouldn't do anything genuinely malicious. You're my best pal and all of that sappy sort of touchy-feely emotional stuff we only mention for the sake of your ironic philosophy because it's already a ridonkulously tangible entity all on its own."

Goddamn Jake is such a bro to Dirk. With the back pats and everything. How the fuck did Brobot get in there? Actually, no, wait. He didn’t want to think about that.

His lips shift slightly downwards at the second thing Jake says. Dirk wasn’t so sure that the Brobot situation wouldn’t have been considered “genuinely malicious” but he guesses that since bringing any sort of sadness to Jake was not the original intent, it never was really meant to be outright mean. It was maliciously stupid though. That much was certain. Ugh, he was harping on that so much. At least he’s got words to hide behind. As long as he didn’t try to express his feels outright, he could keep up the coolkid routine.

“Oh man, English. My face is just flushing right now at the sentimental fluff you are spewing. God, I can’t stop smiling,” Dirk quips dryly. His face looks the same as ever. No smile. Not red. What a funny dude. “Does this mean you want to be best bros forever? Bbfsies? Can— can we make this brofficial? Will you make that bromise to me? Do you agree to give me your broffection five-ever? That means more than forever.”

Dirk has grabbed Jake’s hand by this point and is clasping it to his chest as he stares unblinkingly into his bro’s emerald eyes. Fuck they are so pretty and he wasn’t going to think about that right now okay brain let’s be chill thanks. Strider’s face remains impassive as ever, probably even more serious than usual, but his eyes look like they might be hiding some legit amusement.

Jake's eyes widen ever so slightly as his hand is pressed over Strider's heart and he can't help but blush ever so slightly. Something about this moment is maybe a little tense or something? They're staring each other in the eyes (and now he can see that Dirk's are orange... what a fascinating color), Jake's hand on Dirk's chest, while they proclaim their... broffection for one another? Admittedly, he did have some passing thoughts of Dirk quite a while back and this is sort of calling back to them.

"Of course we're best bros. The most fantastic example of epic camaraderie in existence, I'm sure. I even agree with that outrageous five-ever thing I'm pretty sure you pulled out of your ass because it's correct in the best way possible. We're the pinnacle of awe-inspiring friends that do the greatest tasks ever conceived," Jake replies, maybe babbling a bit and suddenly feeling maybe the slightest bit shy. Dirk's just a friend, though, and he's not ready for anything after losing Brobot.

Holy shit, is that a blush? Did he make Jake blush? And now he’s babbling away like a nervous schoolgirl. Damn. Dirk feels vaguely guilty again. He didn’t want to put Jake into a situation that was going to make him have to confront any romantic feelings; either Dirk’s or his own. Strider had decided as soon as he talked with Brobot that he wasn’t going to go through with his outrageous wooing plans when he met Jake. The robot beat him to the prize and that was that. If Jake wanted to maybe try something at a later date, then Dirk would be there. He was always going to be there. It was a promise.

In the meantime, he drops Jake’s hand like it was no big deal to be holding it in the first place. “Then you’ve got to make this happen by authenticating this miraculous example of bromance with a hella sweet fist bump.” Dirk holds his fist out to Jake expectantly, hoping that playing up his status as a platonic bro (even though it kind of sucks to be friend-zoning himself) will make his bbf more comfortable. Nothing romantic about a fist bump.

Jake gives him a fist bump right away. It's not an immensely firm one, maybe he's still kind of sorting out feelings, but clearly he accepts Dirk's offer of the best bromance ever. "I'll authenticate the shit out of that, Strider. I don't think I could ask for a truer friend."

“You ain’t so bad yourself, English,” Dirk drawls with the tiniest upturn in the corner of his mouth. Looks like the friendship has been completely platonic-ated and Strider has once again proven that he is a true Southern gentleman and not hellbent on forcing Jake to be his boyfriend. Hooray. Time to celebrate, preferably in the form of Dirk beating the shit out of some imps or something. He could use that right now.

Jake chuckles, turning towards the way deeper into the motion, maybe to sort of hide the light blush that popped up at the obvious drawl. Whatever. They're BFFs and nothing's going to happen, either because of their bromantic overtures or because of his own understandable reservations. Thankfully, Dirk hasn't made a move if he feels anything like what AR and Brobot would suggest. "Thanks. Let's get this show on the road, bud!"

"Let’s do it,” Dirk replies, not noticing the blush as he follows Jake. Walking isn’t as interesting as flash-stepping though, and soon enough he’s disappearing and reappearing around Jake, suddenly behind, and next to, and in front of his bro in a blur of motion. 

Sure, Jake has a bit of a start at the flash-stepping at first, surprised that the flesh and blood Strider can actually do that himself, but he quickly adjusts to the fact. Brobot, whom he's TOTALLY not thinking about at all past that being where he first experiences this, used to infuriate him with that sort of movement all the time. Well, maybe he does feel a small pang at that, but seeing his friend goofing around to stave off boredom makes a great distraction so it really isn't that big of a thing in this case. He even gives an amused grin after he gets over the temporary bewilderment that Dirk can move so unbelievably fast.

Flash-stepping probably isn’t the best idea while they are in an unknown, dimly lit cave that might have any number of traps or other dangers. And sure enough it is only moments before Dirk’s letting loose an expletive while being pulled up into the air by a noose around his ankle. Of course, the snare only just manages to flip him upside down before it has been sliced to pieces by his high quality and badass sword. He cinematically lands in a crouch with his still sword drawn, frowning slightly. “Well, that was a disappointment.”

He carefully walks back to Jake, keeping his sword unsheathed just in case. “Watch yourself, English. It looks like the underlings thought they were being clever little shits and rigged some traps in here.”

"Says the guy who stepped into one," Jake says, rolling his eyes at that. Sure, it's nice to have a warning, but seeing Strider temporarily strung up by the ankle made it kind of an obvious consensus to reach, even without spoken dialogue. "I'm actually immensely used to these sorts of ruinous shenanigans. I daresay it's fucking riveting stuff to bide our time with!"

That goofy bastardization of old school and modern wording gets a really incredulous orange stare. My god. It’s hilarious and also incredibly endearing. Dirk doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of listening to English actually say the sorts of stuff that he always typed out in conversations.

“Stepping in it was simply an experimentation on the bonds of our friendship, Jake. This was a test to see whether you’d save me from such a seriously conksucky trap or if you'd force me to bear the shame of actually falling for the piece of shit.” Dirk looks around for any more potential pitfalls from the relative safety of behind Jake’s back. “You passed, in case you were wondering. And since you claim to find it so 'riveting', your reward is that you get to go first into this increasingly dark passageway and set off the traps instead of me. Congrats, bro.”

"Mm-hm. Watch and learn, young grasshopper," Jake says with a jesting eyebrow waggle back to him. He carefully walks forward a couple of steps then stops, holding out an arm to make sure Dirk stops with him.

He motions downward where there's a tripwire set for them. Yeah, they are totally in Jake's territory now. He's not going to point out that the ruins he always went to weren't trapped, but he knows to keep an eye out and he's seen a shitton of movies with stuff like this. "I guess the question now is whether to bypass or attempt to disarm it?"

Dirk rolls his eyes at pretty much everything that is going down. The grasshopper comment, the out of control eyebrows, Jake's Indiana Jones-style treatment of the tripwire, just everything. Jake English is like the real life version of every single one of his bad movies combined.

“I’m nearly positive it won’t matter either way. It was probably set by an imp, which means that if we set it off, the worst that will happen is we’ll get some rocks thrown at us or something stupid like that.” Dirk, don’t you know making those kinds of statements essentially guarantees that the trap is going to be something way worse than that? Haven’t you ever seen an action film? Sheesh. He bends down to look at the wire more closely before reaching out nearly touching it. Goddamn he is reckless.

"Whoa." Jake carefully pulls Dirk back from the wire. "I thought you were the one always prattling about taking caution? Don't suddenly make me the overprotective gent. It's not my inclination."

Jake presses his own back against the wall, pushing Strider against the wall next to him so that they're both out of the way. He pulls out a rifle from his specibus. It's not his weapon of choice exactly, but it'll work for the purpose needed. He uses the end of the barrel to tug the tripwire a bit closer to them, setting off the trap.


	3. In which shit gets wrecked again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pacing? What's that? Sorry. I get impatient sometimes and I like actually letting people read the story at a decent clip.

Dirk had to work really hard to keep his face expressionless when Jake pulled him away from the wire and scolded him. It was even harder not to react when he was pushed against the wall, but he at least managed to not gasp like a girl. Yeah, he probably should have been more cautious but that was a pretty excellent reaction from Jake. Of course, he’s not going to go almost triggering more traps to see if Jake will swoop in and save the day, but. Well. It was a nice experience.

Dirk watches Jake trigger the trap, expecting more lame shit like the one he set off earlier. Instead, a fucking huge boulder falls from the ceiling and smashes to the ground in a cloud of dust, crushing the end of Jake’s rifle. It settles down right in the middle of the tunnel, almost like a coin in the rump of a smuppet... Anyway. The rock isn’t big enough to block their way entirely but it is a definite obstacle and it would have seriously hurt them had they tripped the wire by accident.

“That,” Strider begins slowly, cautiously rubbing the dirt from his eyes. “Was completely fucking unexpected.” He is definitely going to be more careful now, especially for Jake’s sake. He could have been hurt if Dirk had actually gone through with his idiotic plan. That wasn’t an imp-style trap. Too big. Dirk thinks there might be ogres around now, possibly even bigger underlings. The sword is staying out until further notice.

"Tell me about it! Something hella strong must have placed that deathtrap," Jake replies, clearly surprised as well at the result of activating the trap. He expected something stupid just like Dirk had, but he's damn proud of himself for being cautious for once despite that since a little extra awareness really paid off this time.

Dirk turns to his friend, subconsciously brushing some rubble off Jake’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

"I suppose, but..." Jake pulls out the rifle with some effort and whines, "My rifle is entirely trashed! I'm going to find those imp fuckers and give them what for!"

Jake unloads the rifle and captchalogues the bullets since it's useless for shooting, though it's on safety at the moment anyway. He supposes the broken firearm can still be used for the sake of bludgeoning or perhaps triggering more traps so they don't hurt themselves. He glances at Strider with some understandable concern and says, "But I think it's more valid for me to ask if you're alright. You very well could've crushed your head like some sort of unsuspecting grape, setting off that tripwire."

Jesus, is Jake really concerned about his stupid rifle when he could have just died?! It figures. Dirk starts to give him a hard time about it but right as he goes to say something snarky-

He makes the mistake of making eye contact with Jake. Which means he ends up getting an overdose of green eyes filled with that incredibly sweet (even if it is understandable, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s sweet as fuck) concern. Dirk immediately looks away like a tool and prays to god that isn’t a blush he’s feeling spreading over his face right now. Ffff. Turn away, turn away!

“M’fine. My head is fine. Everything is awesome. Let’s just figure out how to get past the boulder.” Dirk quickly faces the gap between the wall and the rock, definitely not hiding or anything. He doesn’t think there is quite enough space for him to just squeeze past.

"Alrighty," Jake replies with a nod, also inspecting the large broken rock in their way. He places his hands on the side of it, testing the weight, and it's about as goddamn heavy as he expects it to be. Using a rocket launcher or anything to that extent certainly won't be good for this situation. There's no way he's risking a cave-in and he's sure Dirk would very readily agree with that. "Should we look for another passage we might have glanced over? This hall can't be the only way to go with a trap of this size unless the imps are THAT frigging stupid... Oh, what am I saying? Of course they could be that stupid!"

“Hm.” Strider moves Jake out of the way and paces around the accessible half of the boulder, putting his hands on the stone and rapping against it with his fists. His lips purse in thought as if he is calculating something in his head. Finally he turns to his friend (and his face doesn’t feel flushed anymore so that’s a relief) with a small smirk on his face. Expressions! Fucking incredible. 

“You know what? I’ve totally got this,” he says, stepping back from the rock until he is an acceptable distance away. Dirk jerks his head at Jake as a sign for him to move out of his pathway as he slowly he shifts his feet, one in front of the other, fingers rolling over and gripping his katana. “Get ready, English. You are about to see some serious Strider swag. Y’might wanna put on some shades because s’gonna get intense.” 

Then with a sudden bout of déjà vu (he wants to be wearing a hat now ON HIS HEAD man that’s so weird), Dirk launches himself up and slices the rock in half. The pieces of the boulder crumble and shift and now there is enough space for the two to get through.

Jake watches the scene with wide-eyed amazement. "Holy shit, that was so cool..."

Swag indeed. Dirk sliced up that small boulder like it was nothing. What the hell is that sword made out of? Is it being kept together by the sheer badassery of Strider? Then again, he has had hear tell of Dirk sparring with some of his robotic creations so this shouldn't be much of a surprise. At least, not if the other robots are like Brobot was.

Jake quickly pushes that thought aside and walks past the boulder, stopping to wait for Dirk on the other side. "Time's a wasting, Bro. Let's get this exploration back on track."

Dirk takes a moment to bask in the adoration of Jake. You’re right. That was cool, Jake. Dirk is soooo coooool. And breaking the rock was really no big once he figured out the weak spot. Having an unbreakable sword and being super strong helped too but that move was the work of a man of science.

The (sort of insufferable) coolkid continues to exude smugness as he flash-steps to Jake’s side. “I’m right behind you, English. No need to wait for me. I think I can handle keeping the pace.”

Jake turns to him with a smile and a joking push to his shoulder. "Good to know, you insufferably awesome guy."

He begins walking again, secretly hoping that Dirk will be cautious about where he steps since, after that tripwire in particular, it looks to be a terrible idea to start hotdogging or anything. The flash-stepping did appear to be out of boredom earlier, but Jake seriously doubts the traps or even the imps would tell the difference. He kind of wishes the imps would just pop up and initiate a good scrum like proper gents (and maybe ladies, since Jake has no clue about imp anatomy and doesn't care to know).

Dirk lips twitch in an almost smile and he clocks Jake on the arm in response to the push. That is some serious best bro stuff right there. It’s almost sickening (and sort of heartbreaking).

He quits the flash-stepping once he’s caught up with Jake. He doesn’t want another trap fiasco either and he wants to stay next to Jake to protect him, thinking that he could easily push him out of the way of any boulders if they set another trap off. While they continue to walk down the fire-lit passageway, Dirk might or might not be sneaking glances at his bestie and sort of internally swooning over the way he looks in the dramatic lighting. Stupid teeth and coating of dust and all, Jake’s a handsome dork. Even better in person. A dashing derp of an adventurer if Dirk ever saw one.

Alright, Strider. That’s enough of that sap. Now where the fuck are the bitches that set that trap? Oh snap, it looks like this narration’s turning to rap. Is it because Strider’s now trying to distract himself from that handsome English chap, and all of his antiquated yet weirdly arousing crap? Probably, and so this is my cue to bridge the gap and just describe what Dirk’s about to encounter. Word.

It’s an ogre. The big dumb thing is bumbling along, probably trying to get back to the trap to see if there were any crushed skulls about. It doesn’t even seem to see them. Dirk looks at Jake (as if he hadn’t already been). “How ‘bout I let you handle this so you can exact revenge for your rifle?”

"Gladly," Jake replies with a mischievous smirk, captchaloguing the now broken piece of shit rifle in favor of pulling out his trusty twin Berettas. "Stay alert. I'm not exactly comfortable using anything larger in such close quarters inside a mountain. Presumably, it'll take quite the effort to bring that ginormous palooka down."

The self-proclaimed adventurer cocks back the hammers of his pistols and shifts his gaze to Dirk for a moment, directing the guns at the ogre. He wants to make sure his friend is ready for this, though the coolkid always appears to have a plan so this is probably no big deal for him. The ogre is still ponderously slowly making an approach, almost close enough to see them. "Ready?"

Holy fucking shit. Jake is impressively awesome(ly hot wait what) with those guns. Dirk’s ready to slide in when the moment looks right, but he figures he’ll give Jake the brunt of the strifing since the boy seemed to have been eager to get some action. The ogre shouldn’t actually be that difficult, but they do have to stay alert about their surroundings. A cave in would be bad and there might still be traps around. 

The orange-eyed boy stares intensely back at Jake (with some serious bedroom eyes wait what), the reservations about hiding feelings and shit suddenly (and only momentarily) gone with the bubbling excitement about kicking some ogre ass with English. He gives a little head tilt to his best bro as an answer, gripping the handle of his sword with a gloved hand, before sliding his eyes away from the emerald ones to the tusked enemy, who now spotted them and lumbered at a slightly less snail-like pace in their direction.

Jake knows that painfully familiar look Dirk is directing at him and is kind of hoping he's wrong about it. Strider's an amazing person in pretty much every conceivable way, except perhaps being kind of a well-intentioned pushy busybody and somehow also managing to be aloof/brusque, but Jake can't think of starting anything with anyone. Not with Dirk, Jane, Roxy, or anyone. Not even with a gal possessing an enticingly cerulean complexion. Time to get his head in the game and try to ignore the awful suspicion that perhaps Brobot's affection did hint at Dirk's own after all.

He faces the ogre as well and begins properly riddling the large creature with bullets. A loud and properly intimidating pained snarl is directed towards Jake, but there's certainly no chance of awkward adoption attempts this time. This is so much easier to think of, inflicting harm on one of the fuckers that attempted to kill them (and still is) and inadvertently wrecked his shit. His eyes narrow at the ogre, concentrating on strifing with it.

Dirk shifts back and forth on his feet, unable to contain the adrenaline surge he gets from strifing. He isn’t even thinking about Jake anymore except as another string to keep track of on the puppet battlefield— the recent break in the barricade between his feelings and what he considers the right thing is completely gone from his mind. His eyes track the ogre, not that it is moving terribly quickly, but it is definitely angry now. And it has gotten closer than Dirk would like since Jake’s specibus is more for distanced attacks and he doesn’t have any real defense against close range combat.

The underling gives a loud, squealing roar as it goes for the annoying little human filling it with holes. A meaty hand comes down and Dirk is immediately there, ducking to avoid the bullets before smoothly arcing the blade across the fist aimed for Jake. The ogre staggers back with a wounded hand and seems to contemplate the fact that he is steadily losing health before bellowing towards them again. Dirk crouches low in front of Jake, holding his bladekind up as a dare for the ogre to try to punch them again.

"Ah!" Jake continues the barrage of bullets but certainly didn't enjoy his friend ducking under his arms and settling there to give the ogre a lashing. He actually planned on moving before the lummox could land a bit. That plan sort of went plummeting out the window screaming when Dirk got so close to his pistols while he's actively firing at an enemy. He's not going to be a whiny bitch since Strider's almost always careful, probably only barring that tripwire from earlier out of hubris, and didn't get too close to the pistols even when ducking into position. After all, cooperation is probably the best policy in this situation.

There's a small pause for the sake of reloading, Dirk eyeing the ogre warily, but the moment is quickly over when the new magazines are set in place. Jake resumes firing on their enemy and ends up further enraging it with a bull's-eye to, well... its eye. Even Jake winces slightly at that.

Strider is pretty okay with just chilling under Jake’s gunfire like a badass and letting his friend do most of the work. It didn’t faze him in the least, being so close to the bullets. There was no way he was going to get shot accidentally; it would be practically impossible for a dude as incredible at fighting as he is. Dirk looks up over his shoulder at Jake after his bro blows out the ogre’s left eye, his expression conveying some serious admiration. It was an impressive shot. He turns back to the enemy and watches as it makes a pretty horrible noise, probably a combination of pain and fury and stumbles.

“Oh, sick,” Dirk says with a cringe as the monster’s eye violently sprays out thick black oil. Angry and wounded, the ogre smashes into the passage wall causing large rocks to crumble away from it. Shit. Not good. The underling quickly utilizes the new weapons for ferociously throwing at the boys; its aim is pretty shitty due to only being able to see out of one eye but the mini boulders are dangerous nonetheless, especially because they are smashing into the walls around them. “Jake, this needs to end. Sooner rather than later.” He takes in the impromptu battlefield with calm, calculating eyes, watching the flying rocks and monitoring the status of the tunnel. The last thing they need is for it to collapse.

“Down,” Dirk orders with a firm tug on Jake’s shirt as watches a rock hiss towards his friend’s head.

Jake quickly ducks, not even needing to be told or pulled, but it's good to know Dirk has his back like any bro worth his salt would. Perhaps this requires a different approach? He carefully aims his guns over Dirk's shoulders and fires a couple of times again, managing to take out the other eye. Damn, it's a very difficult to kill creature. Is this even a normal ogre? He actually feels a bit bad for it being blinded, sort of a fleeting emotion since it's trying to kill them, but it's been blinded and should make things easier as long as they can keep their distance.

The ogre begins flailing wildly in pain and distress and that bit's probably not so great for them. Jake's definitely feeling a surge of concern at how his plan was sort of good but also sort of awful. It can't throw rocks accurately anymore, but it's pissed as hell and isn't afraid to demonstrate that through reckless literally blind abandon. "FRIG!"

The monster is extremely weakened but its rage propels it to keep going. It crashes blindly towards where it knows Jake and Dirk are, knocking another huge chunk out of the wall on the way. That’s not good at all.

Dirk has had enough of letting Jake do all the work now. Not that English wasn’t being a total badass, he was. Dirk has all kinds of respect for the dude. But he needs to get involved because the ogre is going to crush them in a cave-in if it keeps it up.

“Try not to shoot me, English,” he says casually before launching at the obnoxiously flailing giant, sword flashing in the firelight. And the next thing you know, there’s a massive tar-oozing gash in the ogre’s legs and it’s roaring in pain. As the enemy loses it’s footing, there is a blur of movement to the back of the underling that could only be a flash-stepping Dirk.

Now it is stumbling and falling towards Jake, completely knocked off balance by a sucker punch to the back of the head, courtesy of the blonde boy now standing pretty on its shoulder as it collapses (with a certain puppet gracing his own shoulders- sup Cal, sorry for leavin' you hanging in my ‘dex for so long, lil' dude), looking pretty fucking sweet.

Jake blinks with a fairly astonished look at seeing Dirk's strifing skill in action. He hasn't even used that weaponized sylladex he sometimes mentions, but that's probably good considering the current environment of the fight. The ogre grunts under Dirk's feet and twitches in an attempt to move.

The boy holds one of his pistols towards the ogre's head and says, "Oh no you don't."

He closes his eyes and pulls the trigger, not exactly wanting to see the outcome since he knows it'll hit. The sound is bad enough and, though Jake's done plenty of strifing, he's usually just had to drive things away from him. This is still self-defense, but he is killing and that's something newer he's had to start up since going into the game and encountering the imps and similar enemies. Not to mention the fact that this was one was so... personally close.

Dirk is spattered with oil as Jake’s bullet flies true and finishes off the ogre. Good riddance. He unceremoniously wipes his katana off on his pants before sheathing it and hopping off the corpse’s back, going over to Jake to bump fists. Except seeing how Jake’s eyes were closed as he killed the underling and are still closed, clearly reflecting his distaste for that sort of thing, makes Dirk use his outstretched hand to instead fiddle with Lil’ Cal on his shoulders. Seeing Jake's reaction also brought back less than pleasant (and all too recent) memories about a certain robot that met its end at Jake and Dirk’s hands. But hey, there was a lot of grist to collect, so Dirk distracted himself by quickly grabbing it all and not thinking about that stuff anymore.

“Let’s keep moving. I’d rather not stay in this area for too long considering how much this asshole took out of the wall. Besides, I have a feeling we’ll get to whatever the fuck is useful in this mountain pretty soon.”

"Smashing." Jake nods in agreement and quickly joins Dirk when he notices that that his best bro already picked up all of the dropped grist and other resources. That was probably kind of lame for Dirk to see, watching Jake get a bit psyched out. Killing so close is just... kind of a weird thing to do. Most of the time, he had a more moderate distance between him and the imps. Oh well. He'll do better next time. This is all for survival.

Dirk keeps his eyes away from Jake and walks in silence, still feeling the guilt throbbing in his chest. Instead of looking at his bro, he scans the floor and the corridor for traps and enemies, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything to worry about. It even appears to be getting lighter and the tunnel seemed to have gotten wider in the past few minutes of walking. Maybe that meant that they would presently come upon some kind of room. Maybe it would be filled with sweet loot. That’s what Dirk is hoping for. He could always use more awesome swords.

And indeed, the two come upon a doorway with the same sorts of carvings as entrance on the outside of the mountain. Unfortunately, a stone door blocks it. But they might be able to push that out of the way if they use the magic of teamwork!

Jake carefully lays his hands on the door, looking ready to push when Dirk is. He's not sure about the idea so he keeps his voice low so hopefully no one will hear other than Dirk as he asks, "Do you think they're waiting for us in there?"

“Dunno. Guess we’ll find out,” Dirk replies in an equally low tone, with a sort of almost grin on his face. He likes the fact that Jake is being cautious about this; that’s behavior he has been trying to encourage for as long as he can remember.

Dirk puts his gloved hands next to Jake’s and starts to push. With the extra manpower, the door slides out of the way without much difficulty and reveals a large cavernous room.

Absolutely filled with skulls.

It is like motherfucking skull city in this room. Just. Damn. Dirk would be disappointed about the apparent lack of sweet loot but he’s too impressed with the sheer number of craniums all piled into this place. He doesn’t even think that a legit graveyard would have as many skulls as this room has in it. They are all different sizes and shapes too. Some of them are bigger than he is and most are completely foreign looking.

And, of course, there are a large number of little imps, and it looks like maybe a couple of liches (figures, since there are so fucking many skulls) and, oh shit, is that a giclops? And they are all sitting, standing, holding, and climbing on the ridiculous collection of skulls and they all turn and stare at the now open doorway, in which the cool exploring dudes are standing. (What will you do?)

Jake quickly glances over at his friend while the awkward stares commence. "Do you see any other doors or anything?"

Dirk takes a moment to look around and, other than skulls and enemies, there's nothing of note at all. "Nope. Absolutely nothing here except skulls and assholes."

The other boy nods, grabbing Dirk's wrist and pulling him out with him. "Then hurry! Let's get out of here. Once we get to the entrance, we can deal with them!"

Clearly, Jake's planning to bottleneck all of them in the hallway and use some serious firepower while they're outside where it's moderately safer. It certain will be once the bespectacled adventurer brings the pain. Even if it doesn't cause a cave-in, there'll be nowhere for them to hide except away from the two humans. 

As he runs to catch up instead of continuing to let Jake drag him along, Dirk definitely is not thinking something like “He’s holding my hand!” or making sparkle eyes or anything like that. Jake only grabbed his wrist and, though he might be ridiculously crushing on his bro, he’s definitely not going to freak out over this like a fucking loser. 

That being said, he can’t help but think how awesome all of this is adventure shit with Jake is. Of course, that’s before he remembers the current circumstances; the deadly game they are in and all of the guilt and heartbreak that he’s felt today. 

Dirk kind of jerks his arm out of Jake’s grip and easily increases his speed to run next to him. A majestic, graceful, powerful Strider in flight. So sugoi.

Admittedly, it is awesome, partaking in this adventure of a time and seeing Strider not only match his speed, but easily keep up without breaking a sweat. Of course, he knows by now that his best bro can manage far faster, though he's unsure if Dirk can manage it over long distances, short sprints, or something in between.

Regardless, it won't do much for them unless Dirk wants to stay out of danger. While Jake would prefer not to have the slightest chance of a friend in peril, he has the distinct feeling that Strider won't go so far ahead of his own volition. Whatever.

"Strider?" Jake asks, trying to keep his breathing even as they run. "The broken boulder we left is fast approaching! Can you run slightly ahead of me so that we don't collide with one another?"

That area should be the first area where the ranks will be slightly thinned down by obstacles.

“On it,” Dirk replies, doing one of his famous motion blurs and popping up about 5 feet in front of Jake. He glances over his shoulder, both checking on Jake and the mob of underlings on their tail. The number of enemies there is pretty substantial. Dirk wasn’t sure if they were actually going to give chase but it looks like they found the opportunity to potentially beat down the good guys too tempting to pass up. 

“On your left, English,” he barks, as one of the more enthusiastic (and speedy) imps makes a dive for Jake. They are pretty weak and the likelihood of it being able to do anything of consequence is next to nothing— and that knowledge is really the only that prevents Dirk from throwing on the brakes and running the little fucker straight through with his sword. 

Jake, of course, quickly moves to the right in response while taking out his rifle at the same time and smacking the imp in a pretty damn badass fashion with the stock. The move trips up a few imps that were trailing only slightly behind at that point out of surprise and the hit imp falling into them. That little task complete, Jake concentrates back on looking forward and running like mad, still clutching the broken rifle just in case. It really does make a fine bludgeoning tool.

When Dirk turns back to face the front, he can see the broken boulder getting closer and checks his position to make sure he will be able to get through the space without tripping. Then he turns back to look at Jake again and make sure the boy is keeping away from the monsters.

It turns out Jake is doing alright enough under the circumstances. Some more imps are attempting to close in, but they'll be regretting that when the broken boulder is reached. Nice as it is that Dirk's still very clearly looking out for him, Jake says, "I'm fine! Careful!"

Dirk makes a grunting, dismissive noise in response to Jake’s concern, but he does face the boulder as it comes within range. He speeds up and practically dances through the person-sized gap, agile as ever, powering through to the other side. Dirk sprints a few more feet then turns and slides to a stop, watching Jake come up to the rock with well-concealed worry.

Dirk’s sword is out again and he’s in his fighting stance, ready to lay the beatdown on the imps if they try any shit while his bestie is going through the boulder.

One of the imps manages to grab the back of Jake's jacket, but that tiny victory doesn't last very long for it. Jake continues to run through the boulder and, unprepared for that as the imp is, it smashes against one of the edges, stunned into letting go of the article of clothing it managed to grasp. He fulfills the goal to make it through the boulder without any other mishaps and most of the imps hot on his tail are forced to awkwardly attempt trickling through the moderate opening between the boulder in some sort of semi-organized fashion. By the time any of the larger creatures come along to actually bust the boulder down more, pretty much all of the small imps will be through it anyway at a slower rate than they could've.

Jake runs past Dirk with a meaningful look. The sort that says the same message as the adventurer does. "Get your butt in gear, we're almost there!"

Dirk takes a brief second to boot an imp that managed to push ahead of the pack and squeeze through the rock before he quickly rejoins Jake in a couple long strides. Them Striders gonna stride. 

Then he remembers that, oh fuck, this is the area with traps— right before stepping on a weird looking stone that sinks into the floor—

“FUCK!” Dirk exclaims looking over his shoulder at the depressed button as he continues to run. But whatever he stepped on doesn’t seem to do anything...

No wait. It definitely does something. The floor has started shaking in a way that is incredibly ominous. The imps that are trying to push through the boulder look pretty scared and many of them are trying to turn around and go back, desperately pushing against the pileup of underlings with little squeaks of terror.

Then, beginning at a crack under the broken rock, the ground starts to fissure and crumble. The underlings shriek at each other as they scramble to get away from the steadily growing cracks. There is a loud snap as the tunnel under the boulder shatters and just falls away into a seemingly bottomless pit, taking any imps stuck in the rock with it. And Dirk thought they needed to be concerned about the ceiling caving in.

Unfortunately, with that hunk of the floor gone, the fractures in the ground seem to spread out faster, suddenly appearing right behind Jake and Dirk’s running feet.

"GOOD LORD!" The collapsing floor gives Jake a very good idea of why Dirk gave that loud expletive while almost stumbling for a brief moment. He stepped on another trap. Now who's the danger prone one?

“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,” Dirk anxiously mutters, definitely starting to feel sort of out of breath as he picks up the pace even more. “Only in this motherfucking game...”

"I wasn't expecting this shit!" Jake says, lamenting their luck as he can practically feel the floor crumble away behind their feet. He glances over at Dirk as they make their mad dash. "Speed to the entrance! We don't need to share our weight here!"

Jake would never point it out, but he also simply wants his friend out of the absurd amount of danger this is presenting since Dirk's perfectly capable of removing himself from it. The point of not saying the fact is that it would absolutely make Dirk defiantly stay with him instead. Hopefully that bit of logic English brought up instead can get him moving.

"Like fucking hell I'm leaving your ass behind," Dirk growls in that wonderfully colorful wording of his, looking pretty pissed at Jake for even implying that he would/should do such a thing.

He keeps sprinting but the floor is just tumbling away from him, seeming to be breaking even faster, maybe from their pounding footfalls. He looks over at Jake, his orange eyes completely unreadable. He reaches out to Jake, fingers stretching towards the dark haired boy running beside him as the floor shatters beneath them. Does he have a plan? Or is he saying goodbye? Probably the first since it is Dirk we're talking about here.

"Jake, take my hand," he says, vaguely wondering how many clichés he is going to throw into this action sequence. And he makes fun of Jake for being a dork...

Jake quickly captchalogues the broken rifle, reaching out for Dirk with his own hand. This moment is kind of awful to ponder over. He would've liked if Dirk wasn't being a stubborn asshole about this and assured one of them would be safe if they can't maintain enough speed to stay ahead of the crumbling floor. Unlike Strider, his eyes are currently making him an open book. He's painfully obviously concerned about his friend and whether they can make it together since Dirk won't go ahead on his own.

Dirk snatches his one-time (and maybe future but he’s not going to hope for that or anything especially when neither of them will have a future if he doesn’t put his plan into action) love-interest’s hand. Fuck yeah hand holding. Except in this case, Dirk really isn’t thinking about it romantically at all. Instead he puts a tight grip on the other boy, and with an entirely straight face, he raps.

“English, I’d ask you for a beat but I don’t know, if I can trust you to break it down while running so, it’s chill, this time I’ll take it on alone, get my mad wicked flow going for my best bro, you’ll be callin’ tally-ho, and, man, even though, your world’s even shittier than my conksuck sord... I can show you it, princess, if you get on board.”

Both sord... and the board are launched violently out of the sylladex as Dirk manages to get one good push off the already falling floor, flinging Jake forward onto the rocket. Dirk leaps on after and snatches the sord... out of the air, barely managing to get a hold of it since it is so fucking shitty. He stuffs it away as fast as possible, then takes a moment to soak in his awesomeness before scoping the situation.

They are flying towards the entrance and so it doesn’t matter at all if the floor is gone (which it is) but Jake is in front on the two-booster device which sort of an issue considering he hates this thing and doesn’t know shit about piloting.

Clearly surprised by the sudden jump, Jake makes a shocked and not particularly manly sort of yelp. He shakily half-stands, really more of an nervous crouch than anything else, on the rocketboard. That was seriously badass and he admittedly feels a bit silly for not thinking of that sort of method of escape earlier.

At least Dirk figured out what to do, though they lost a nice amount of potential grist because of the trap that destroyed the integrity of the floor. That must've been an originally built trap since it was sophisticated and presumably quite the endeavor to make.

Jake very nervously attempts to keep the board level to some degree, managing it to a serviceable degree but with some unsettling wobbling going on once in a while. Strider made it look far easier than it really is. He'd look back at his friend or something if he wasn't too worried about dividing his attention.

Dirk tries to help with the balance issues from the back by shifting his own weight but it isn’t very effective. His hands reach out, about to grab Jake and move him into the proper position manually, but then he realizes how that might come off and he doesn’t want to make his bro uncomfortable. Of course then Jake does some weird tilty shifting and the rocket practically tries to buck them off, so Dirk’s gloved hands are definitely gripping Jake’s hips and pushing and pulling him into different weight distributions to get the deck to stop shaking. Fuck unresolved sexual tension, man.

Jake doesn't seem to mind the slight redirection from the guiding hands on his hips, if only because there's no possible way to get him more nervous than having him stand precariously on the rocketboard. God, he hates that thing sometimes. He tries his best to stay in a proper position, glad to feel the board indeed staying more level than his frantic compensating motions to keep some semblance of balance had been managing.

“Hey, so. I don’t want you to bitch at me or weep little girl tears, as we both know you are bizarrely prone to doing, but Jesus dick. You kind of suck at this, bro,” Dirk says, (sort of reluctantly) relinquishing his hold on his friend. “But you’re in luck. Di-Stri is offering free lessons in wicked shredding. And by that I mean I’m going to stand here and tell you how to not make us look like total tools with your hunchback stance or kill us by tipping the board.”

"Heeey, I thought a lower center of gravity would be better?" Jake says in possibly the whiniest way possible. Despite that, he's certainly not going to cry over something ridiculous like a little bit of true criticism. The claim of bitching... maybe or maybe not. He feels confident enough to look back at Dirk now with a smidgen of skepticism under the nervousness. "But I guess that sort of thing is too uncool for the gent that's taken up irony to an academic level, hm? I heartily apologize for making us look like tools to avoid a fiery crash or something."

Dirk looks at Jake’s feet then begins instructing him in a soft but firm sort of tone. “Point your front foot towards the head of the board at about a 45 degree angle. The back foot should be perpendicular to the deck. Bend your knees but knock that crouching shit off, Jake. There’s no need to cower like you’re in for a bitchslap. I mean, I know that your old-timey brain is screaming witchcraft and probably a million other ridiculous sounding things at this 'flying contraption', but I promise I won’t let you die of rocketboard.”

Regardless of the whining, Jake does follow the rest of the suggestions, ending up slightly less awkward than before. It's a decent start. "And, please! I'm not that ignorant about machines. I use firearms on a regular basis if you failed to notice that tidbit about me."

He shrugs ever so slightly. This is probably getting ridiculously sentimental. Nothing can hold all the absurd amounts of sweet bromance here. "Plus, well... I do have confidence that you'll help me out. You always do."

Pretty much everything Jake said received the characteristic poker-faced Dirk stare but it was clear from the way his lips twitched that he found the sort of outrage and fervent defense being employed by his friend rather amusing. Until Jake said the bromantic last sentence.

“Not always,” Dirk says in a small voice, a subconscious reaction to being told that he always helps Jake. Before any response from Jake can happen though, Strider’s continuing with the instructions, back to his normal speaking tone. “We’re coming up to a slight turn, okay? Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’ll lean towards the direction we want to go— not too much, don’t turn back into Quasibrodo, dude— just enough to get the board to change its course.”

The bend in the tunnel was small and if Jake couldn’t handle it, Dirk could easily correct their course. But he has faith that Jake could do it. “Have at it, English.”

Jake gives a slight nod and then leans over ever so slightly, getting used to the effect it has on the board's trajectory and compensating accordingly to follow the slight curve of the tunnel. They're getting closer to the entrance and their surroundings are starting to become slightly better lit. Jake's face lights up in a bit more of a metaphorical sense, clearly pleased by his improvements with Strider's advice. "Looks like I'm acquiring some prowess on this infernal machine after all!"

Dirk manages to refrain from being a complete ass about Jake’s silly colloquialisms and instead lets the dude be proud of his accomplishment. “I’m thinkin' some serious high fives are in order once we’re on the ground.”


	4. In which a punch to the face is the only proper reaction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's not much to say about this one. Just plugging away.  
> Basically, I have no patience. XD

He can see the entrance of the cave and the light of day and now he can see the outside and now they actually are outside. And it’s perfectly safe out here. Thank fucking god. “Thank fucking god,” Dirk voices with a bit of a relieved sigh.  
  
"Ha ha. The sentiment is definitely mutual. As ripsnorting as an adventure can be, crumbling floors into seemingly endless voids is something I can do without," Jake says, sounding a bit relieved and breathless from their daring escape. It wasn't entirely a pleasant time, but they made it out and that's something considering all of the pitfalls (including a literal one) they found in the mountain ruin.  
  
Dirk puts a hand on Jake’s back, a gesture masquerading as a sort of pat of approval. In actuality, it was mostly done because touching him is a reassurance that the boy he is in love with is okay after that ridiculous adventure. Strider's just extremely grateful that the body under his hand is safe.  
  
The hand on his back for the moment reminds him again of the fact that holy shit he can actually touch another human being now. Kind of a depressing thing to find as some grand innovation but that's the way things are. Jake's almost tempted to revel in the contact for a moment, but that would probably be dumb. Instead, he decides to quietly mill about with the rocketboard.  
  
“Idea: Why don’t you take this devil fucking deathtrap or whatever you called it to some place where I can clean some of this filth off of me? It’ll be good practice for you and I won’t have to run around looking like the Pig-Pen to your feral child Charlie Brown for an extended period of time.” Dirk kind of hates being dirty and being covered in oil and dust and who knows what else is kind of making him cringe.  
  
"Oh, come on. That's not my sort of style of vernacular," Jake replies, rolling his eyes again and begins carefully moving the rocketboard in a direction where he thinks he saw some water earlier. It looked similar to the river back on the island. Good thing, too, considering worlds tend to sound like they have absurd if not inhospitable things instead of water; such as oil, lava, blood, tea, or other stuff. "But, yes, I think can manage this sort of thing."  
  
“Jake. I have been in communication with you for longer than three years. I’m positive I know all of your geriatric gems by this point. And that was exactly your sort of style of ridiculous vernacular, old chap,” Dirk quips, bringing his other hand up to playfully and lightly pat against Jake’s back. Wow that is really silly and weirdly affectionate of him. He knocks it off. The river was in sight anyway and he needs to make sure they don’t land in it in shoddy landing attempt from Jake.  
  
"Pff. Whatever," Jake says, giving a teasing nudge of his elbow in response.  
  
“Alright. Last lesson. An easy way to stop the board is to bring it close to the ground and shift your weight to your back leg. The nose will start to come up. When it does, use your front foot to swing the board sideways until you are 90 degrees to your original position and redistribute your weight normally. Then we lean away from the direction we’re going and we will lose momentum and stop. Absolutely bully, right?”  
  
Dirk knows it is kind of tricky to stop the rocketboard. If Jake screws up though, they can just bail. They’ll be close enough to the ground so that they won’t get more than slightly scraped up.  
  
"Sounds spiffing enough..." Jake concentrates on his feet attempting to follow the sort of complicated instructions to bring the board to a halt. His turn on the board is a little shaky, but he manages that bit. Of course, then comes the leaning. He gets a bit nervous and leans a bit far, causing the board to change directions and shake a bit under them.  
  
The board changes direction right towards a tree and Dirk doesn't think he can balance the wobbling and correct their course in time.  
  
"Shit," he states. "Bail." Strider jumps off the board and manages to stay on his feet, only stumbling for the briefest moment. Then he immediately begins running after Jake on the board.  
  
The board honestly isn't going that fast but it is getting dangerously close to hitting that tree. Dirk will pull Jake off the board himself if the dude doesn't respond to his increasingly concerned commands. "Bail, Jake. Jump off!"  
  
Jake nods and quickly makes a youth roll off of the errant rocketboard before it hits the tree. He sits up, some leaves now added to the dusty mess on him and his hair looking even more tousled than usual. He winces slightly at seeing the board collide with the tree, not enough to damage it but probably enough to cause a good concussion for them if they hadn't bailed like that did. That really does suck. He was really starting to improve until that point. "Goddamn it."  
  
The panic Dirk's attempting to hide increases to truly insane levels as he watches Jake roll off the board. He sprints to where his friend landed, quickly kneeling next to his body. But then Jake pops up, sitting on the ground and looking both disheveled and petulant as he swears, and the worry dissipates. Dirk actually chuckles. Not much. Sort of like a "Heheh." But a Dirk Strider laugh is still like a unicorn.  
  
He gently brushes some leaves from Jake's back and shoulders, sneakily scoping for any injuries his friend might have sustained. "That wasn't a bad run."  
  
"I guess not. It was almost getting... engaging?" Jake replies with a shrug. He's alright since he only got a few little scrapes and that's just the risk of doing adventurous and daring things. It's also a good sign that at least he's not as nervous about the rocketboard as he used to be, since he was actually trying it out himself and didn't manage to kill himself.  
  
"Good. Then there's still hope that you will join us here, in the modern era." Dirk stands up, holding his gloved hands out to Jake to help him off the ground.  
  
"If you keep me around, I'll let you borrow the board whenever and teach you some rad tricks. Perhaps one day you will actually achieve some modicum of coolness. But I don't want to get your hopes up," he teases, his orange eyes mirthful and-- surprisingly-- still uncovered.  
  
Dirk is practically giddy to be on solid and safe ground again. And, looking back, that adventure was pretty exciting, even if it was kind of a waste of time, considering the only loot they got was the grist from the ogre. That's okay though, altogether they had quite a lot for Jane to torrent from. Oh. Jane. He wondered if she was doing alright. Strider felt guilty about leaving her on LOBAS but he knew that if anything bad went down, either she or Lil' Seb, who he insisted stay with her, would have contacted him. And anyway, she was a tough cookie.  
  
Jake accepts one of his best bro's hands to help haul himself back up. It's kind of unreal seeing Strider continue to leave his shades off, not that Jake particularly minds that. They're a strange color the same as his text, similar to the fact that Jake's text matches his own shade of green. He just has to tease back after Dirk's bit of sass over coolness level, so he snickers and says, "Hey, I'm definitely cool. I'm so gloriously awesome that if I did something to properly express the epic amounts of greatness, I'd probably cause oceans rising and cities falling."  
  
“I’m not even going to get into the irony of you attempting to prove your cool to me through some thinly veiled quoting of shitty movies,” Dirk replies, raising an eyebrow. His lip twitches up at the corner and he's pretty sure the shades are going to go back on shortly— it’s too difficult to remain aloof when he doesn’t have the tinted barrier. “And anyway, I think you’ve expressed enough 'awesome' today, oh Page of Hope. In fact, you’re lucky to even have survived.”  
  
"You know hope always survives," Jake replies with an eyebrow waggle. He can't help it. This is just a hilarious conversation to have with his best bro. It's so awesome he was able to spot that reference to Deep Impact.  
  
He holds up a hand expectantly after completing Jake’s reference to that hideously mediocre movie’s really melodramatic tagline. Heaven and Earth are about to collide, he thinks, but he’s definitely not going to say it out loud because that is just too many lame quotations in such a short time period.  
  
“I believe I deserve some skin on glove contact for that one.”  
  
Jake gives Dirk a high five at that. He's left him hanging long enough. After that, he looks up slightly and sees that somehow Lil' Cal's still up on Dirk's shoulder. He can't help but snicker goodnaturedly at the sight. "Hell's bells, I'm surprised that puppet managed to stay firmly planted on you this whole time."  
  
“Hm? Puppet?” Dirk looks vaguely puzzled for a moment then feels the object in question slump against his head. “Oh. Little man. Have I introduced you two yet?”  
  
Dirk had actually forgotten Cal was there, clinging around his neck. Probably because that’s where the dude liked to hang and Dirk was so used to it that it was easy to forget about. He unwraps Cal’s arms and pulls him off, holding him out to Jake while the puppet shakes excitedly. “HEE HEE! HAA HAA!”  
  
“This is Jake English, Cal. I've told you about him," Dirk says to the puppet, perhaps referring to the many nights spent curled up in bed with his favorite possession, telling him about Jake and his feelings. "Jake, Lil’ Cal.”  
  
The puppet paps Jake on the face with one of his long arms before laughing again, “HOO HOO!” And Dirk may or may not be chuckling along with him.  
  
Jake chuckles fondly at Dirk's introduction of the weird puppet to him. That's kind of endearing in a way? The pap and laugh was a bit of a surprise, but it just causes another smile. This is sort of eccentric of Dirk, but it's not like Jake doesn't have some of his own. Kissy faces at posters of blue women, anyone?  
  
“Do you mind holding him while I go wash up?” Dirk asks, and without waiting for an answer, he’s flash-stepped Lil’ Cal onto Jake’s head and is heading down to the river to get the grime off.  
  
"Sur- Ah!" Jake looks up at Lil' Cal and holds the puppet's noodly legs in an attempt to support it, though it's clinging well enough on its own. Well, that's one way to get a volunteer for puppet-guarding duty, he guesses. He really doesn't mind, though, even if it does look odd.  
  
Dirk is trying very hard not to swoon at Jake’s easygoing acceptance of his darling puppet. He gives Cal a look like, “See? This is why I love him so much.”  
  
Jake offers the puppet a little smile, not that he's sure why he's trying to be friendly to an inanimate object. Still, his friend does seem to hold it in high regard, so why not? "Ahoy, chap. I guess we'll be hanging out for a couple of minutes?"  
  
Down by the water, Dirk is crouching and splashing water on his face and arms. The filth is resisting his attempts at scrubbing with his hands though, especially the oil, so he casually stands and pulls off his shirt to use as a washcloth. It’s no big deal. We’re all bros here. Shirtless Dirks are whatever. He dips the already dirty white shirt into the water, rubs it over his arms and face and chest (which isn’t dirty but the cool water feels nice), then wrings it out and repeats.  
  
The whole shirtless Dirk thing definitely isn't that huge of a deal right now. Jake's a guy as well, men are shown shirtless plenty in movies, and they're best bros. Sure, Dirk's attractive, but they're friends and Jake isn't ready for anything else right now so he's trying not to think about it. It's working to an extent.  
  
He looks over at Jake, who seems to be holding conversation with Lil' Cal (and that makes him pine in a way that is kind of horrific), washing his shoulder. “Are you two biffles yet?”  
  
"Erm. Maybe?" Jake replies. It feels kind of presumptuous for some reason to speak for the puppet even though it can't speak for itself since it's a puppet, but he's being amicable with Cal, so hopefully that counts for something. It's probably the fact that this is being revealed more and more as an important item to Dirk. He shakes one of the puppet's hands carefully in a friendly gesture.  
  
Shirtless Dirk, as uninteresting as he might be for Jake to look at, is now feeling adequately clean. He attempts to launder some of the dirt out of his white shirt, then wrings it as dry as he can. He isn’t going to put it on while it is still damp though, so he throws it over his shoulder as he stands and stretches. He’s definitely not showing off his body or anything like that because he knows that Jake isn’t interested (and it’s kind of insulting to Brobot’s memory). These actions have nothing sexual behind them whatsoever.  
  
The shades are coolly slipped on as he saunters back over to his friend. Dirk definitely needs them because Jake is making his feelings all rush to the surface again with the incredibly sweet way he is treating the little dude.  
  
“HAA HEE HEE HOO!” Lil’ Cal exclaims, gently papping all over Jake’s face after the handshake. Dirk stands there looking about as amused as he can given his glasses, a half smile on his lips.  
  
Jake laughs softly at the papping, not minding the situation in the least. It's kind of entertaining, actually. Dirk definitely has a talent for making Cal move like that.  
  
“I’d say that Cal likes you a lot.” Dirk lifts his puppet off of Jake’s head (even though that was adorable).  
  
“I’m gonna put you away now, okay, lil’ dude? I promise it won’t be for long.” The puppet nods and laughs and paps Jake once more before Dirk captchalogues him.  
  
"Nice to meet a new pal," Jake comments after Lil' Cal is back in the sylladex. It's kind of difficult to genuinely weird Jake of all people out, considering living on hellmurder island all of his life and having a romance with a robot built by an internet friend that has a striking resemblance to said friend.  
  
"I suppose I'll take a little rinse myself while we're here," he says, walking over to the river to wash his face and hands. Jake didn't get nearly as much splatter from the ogre's death as Strider had, so it doesn't take as long for him to finish and he doesn't need to partially disrobe. He dries his hands on his shirt after he's finished and ruffles his hair a little to remove some of the dust that might still be clinging there.  
  
Admittedly, the washing up is reminding him of his time at the river back on the island. He takes a quick look at his reflection and it's passable for their current situation, but he does sigh at the nagging thoughts of Brobot and their short-lived time. He really feels he shouldn't be this hung up about it, thinking back constantly, but it's hard when there's been no time to just relax and think through all of it.  
  
While Jake is washing up, Dirk is looking around the area, trying to focus on things other than the return of his feelings and sad thoughts that he had thought he managed to push aside. It was just— the way Jake interacted with Lil’ Cal made him remember all the conversations he had with his puppet about being in love with Jake and why it had to be Jake. He didn’t think he would or could ever love anyone else as much. He didn’t even want to try to feel anything for someone else. The only thing he wanted to try was to one day try to show his fucking best friend in the entire world just how much he loves him.  
  
In his seemingly endless thoughts about giving away his heart, Dirk knew he wanted to be there, right in front of Jake English, honestly expressing his feelings for that obtuse, beautiful, ridiculous derp. He wanted Jake to be the first person that actually saw him open up, break the coolkid facade.  
  
And then he was beat out of Jake’s heart. By his own robot.  
  
Tin cans shouldn’t even have feelings.  
  
Dirk stares at Jake as he brushes off the dirt, feeling hopeless and jealous and broken. It’s even worse, knowing that Jake probably feels similar since he had been listening to the feed when he said he might be in love with Brobot. He puts a hand over his glasses, trying to control his thoughts.  
  
Jake pushes his own thoughts away, feeling an uncomfortable clenching at his chest at having to do so yet again. He can't keep his friend waiting. Dirk, Jane, and Roxy are all working hard and deserve for Jake to be doing the same without his feelings getting too far in the way. He stands up and brushes some of the dust from his jacket and shorts, turning back to Dirk.  
  
He walks over, noting the way that Dirk is covering his shades with his hand. That can't be a sign of anything particularly good. He gives a slightly uneasy look to see his friend presumably distressed or at least pondering over something and asks, "Have a migraine, Strider?"  
  
Said boy removes his hand and looks at Jake’s concerned face for about a second before honestly being unable to take in those eyes any longer. “Yes,” he lies. “But in all likelihood it is just dehydration.”  
  
Dirk pulls out a bottle of orange soda from his sylladex (man, he’s got so fucking much orange soda), cracks the top, and starts swigging it. Pop is not hydrating in the least but what the fuck ever; it’s like he is drowning his sorrows in fizzy artificial flavors. He’s managed to guzzle about half of the bottle before he feels in control enough to look at Jake again. Strider holds the florescent orange drink out to his friend amicably. “Want some?”  
  
"Sure." Jake curiously takes the soda and sips a little, pulling it away fairly quick and looking slightly startled at the feeling of the carbonation. He notices a small shit-eating grin on Dirk's face at that reaction and petulantly says, "Well, I've never actually sampled a soda pop before. How would you react?"  
  
Dear. Sweet. God. Dirk can’t help but lose his straight-faced façade when Jake practically throws the drink across the clearing after the first sip. He was like a startled kitten or something equally adorable. Jake’s reaction to his face, which he is sure is expressing the fact that he found Jake to be hilarious, only makes him start actually laughing. “Not like someone just set off a firework under my ass.”  
  
The adventurer takes another curious sip of the orange-flavored drink now that he knows what to expect. The carbonation still feels a bit odd, but it tastes interesting. It vaguely tastes like an orange but it's definitely sweeter. He drinks probably about half of what's left, feeling a bit thirsty himself, and hands the soda back over to his best bro.  
  
Dirk accepts the bottle, but only takes a small sip before pushing it back into Jake’s hands. “I’m fine. You can finish it. I would be loathed to refuse you the ambrosia that is Sunkist. Do you like it?”  
  
"It's an interesting taste," Jake admits with a shrug.  
  
Dirk stands quietly, watching Jake, and thinking about what else to say while simultaneously trying not to think about anything at all because it seems that every time he does, his thoughts turn to Brobot.  
  
Jake finishes off the last of the Sunkist, still admittedly settling into the weird feeling of the small bubbles made by the carbonation, and captchalogues the empty bottle, not exactly privy to littering (except bullets and dropped enemies when applicable).  
  
"Should we look around to see if maybe there are any friendly creatures not in mountainous death traps that are waiting to get the drop on us like some sort of inanimate ninjas?" he asks, since there's only so much to do at a time like this that's at least slightly productive.  
  
“Uh,” Dirk starts, and then feels irritated by using ‘uh’ as a starter because it implies that he needed time to process the question. Which he did because he wasn’t really listening due to the fact that his mind was currently busy traversing a much more dangerous route than the one in the mountain. All of his thoughts were on the relationship between Jake and Brobot and he couldn’t seem to shake them.  
  
“Alright. Yeah. We can look around for your consorts. But we aren’t going to go very far because as pleasurable as that mountain adventure was— and let’s be honest here, it was pretty fucking awful— I don’t think I have another one in me.”  
  
"Trust me, I can do without an adventure of that sort, too," Jake says as a reassuring note.  
  
Dirk starts to walk along the edge of the forest next to the river, slightly ahead of Jake. He moves in silence, brain buzzing as it comes up with an incredibly shoddy plan to maybe help with the feelings that he’s getting really sick of.  
  
“So,” he begins casually, as if he is going to make some small talk. Which hopefully as far as Jake knows, he is. “I’ll take it you were busy finishing your rabbit when you totally shot down my early attempts at— what hilariously antiquated way did you put it? Was it malarkey?” Dirk knew it was malarkey. That barely-even-a-conversation was scratched into his brain.  
  
And shit, was he really doing this? He pauses and turns around to face Jake, a sort of grin-smirk (that is completely fake) plastered on his face. “Not that I care that you didn’t want to talk to me but I’ve got to say that I’d like to see some revenue from the investment that I made in the fate of your bunny after talking to AR about your request for uranium. So did you send it?”  
  
Obviously, that's a terrible question to ask. Jake's face just drops and he tries to cover that up with a particularly weak smile. "Of course I sent Mr. Terry Kiser on his way. That was the point, right? Just... obtain some uranium, finish it up, and send it on its merry way."  
  
He glances away, his mind clearly going somewhere else. Somewhere not particularly pleasant, judging from the sadness lurking on his expression. Jake's thinking of how he had to kill Brobot, how Brobot just let him do it- just grabbed his heart and pulled it out. The robot even directed his hands to do it. Fuck.  
  
“That’s good,” Dirk continues to lie, same twisted half-smile on his lips. It’s like he doesn’t even have control over his tongue anymore— like his thoughts have taken over and decided to go on some revenge kick, making his mouth spew these passive-aggressive provocations.  
  
He didn’t expect the anger that suddenly bubbled up in his gut when he sees the way Jake looks so crushed, when he puts on that smile that any asshole with eyes could easily see through. And the green-eyed boy looks away, and Dirk is almost frightened by the sudden urge to grab Jake’s chin and force him to look while Dirk continues to slice him with words.  
  
“I guess I’m curious as to how you managed to obtain said uranium. I kept expecting a report from you, detailing the royal ass-kicking you received while trying to get your rock, but, obviously, it never came.”  
  
Dirk tries to tell himself that this really idiotic goading is for Jake’s sake; to get him to toughen up or something, because that’s what he should do, right? That’s the motivation here, right? And it isn’t because Dirk is jealous and sad and bitter that Jake is trying to keep things from him and is now sort of being a douchebag and punishing him.  
  
Right?  
  
"I just..." Jake looks down at his hands a bit guiltily, those eyes Dirk keeps concentrating on in particular even look a bit dull and listless. "I pulled it out of Brobot."  
  
He really seriously does not what to think of what he had done. Brobot didn't seem to mind the situation so much, but Jake does. He's the one left behind with no one to blame but himself. He used up all of that uranium being stupid, he's the one who had to put so much work into that rabbit and insist that he do it with his own hands with advice from his friends, and he's the one who ultimately had to pull Brobot's heart away to finish things. He actually had to kill the one friend he could touch and that he was finally actually appreciating as a person with feelings and opinions. It's a hurtful thought and Jake's attempt at a smile becomes all the more weaker for it.  
  
Dirk was breaking him; Jake could barely keep the hurt from his face. Something inside of Strider snarled victoriously, feeding off of the pain that was now being shared between the two boys. But it wasn’t enough to make Dirk feel better. Jake was still trying to mask his emotions.  
  
“Yeah, I figured that much. It just seems unusual that the robot didn’t put up more of a fight. Was it malfunctioning?” The question was posed as if Dirk was asking himself, except he was doing so at a level that was definitely loud enough for Jake to hear.  
  
“Honestly, I was expecting you to look like someone packed you up on the bus to Laceration City, home of the Contusions. But you seem to have come off scotch-free. Well. Mostly.“ Dirk offhandedly gestures to his own neck, passively (and maliciously) drawing attention to the bruises, hickeys, on Jake’s. Though the jacket had been doing a good job of hiding them (and Dirk had been really trying not to look) he had seen the marks on the tanned flesh that his robot left. They made him want to vomit. Dirk didn’t really have a good grip on himself now; he felt lost, having let his emotions run unchecked for too long now to be able to pull them in.  
  
“It must have been a glitch. Kind of a shame, but hey. Even though Brobot was one of my best creations, at the end of the day, it was still only a robot, right?” His eyes narrowed under the tinted lenses, studying Jake’s face intently. It was almost as if he was taking an expression of sadness over Brobot from his friend as an excuse to finally blow up.  
  
Jake shifts the collar of his jacket, hiding the view of the hickeys for the moment, not that it does any sort of good now past making him feel a little less vulnerable in front of his friend.  
  
He turns away slightly, not able to hold even the most artificial of smiles at this point. It seriously sucks to hear Dirk, Brobot's supposedly benevolent creator and Jake's best bro, talk about the deactivated robot that way. Considering how things went, Jake definitely feels the need to defend the robot's honor in this situation. "H-he wasn't glitched or just another contraption."  
  
“Woah there, English. That is some surprisingly sentimental shit coming from the dude who constantly took up grievances with the ‘infernal tin can’ I built for him,” Dirk says, his tone starting to take on some of the intense bitterness that Jake’s defense of Brobot made him feel. He’s further spurred by the way Jake won’t meet his eyes and is no longer smiling. Dirk’s faked smile is gone too, replaced by barely concealed anger and betrayal and jealousy.  
  
“It almost seems like you are upset about the whole deactivation. Are you upset about Brobot, Jake?” He isn’t really expecting a verbal response, only more distress and hurt. A sick part of him rejoices at the ability to twist the knife like this, like the way Brobot twisted the knife by lording his intimacy with Jake over him. The hours of inaccessible footage, the way Brobot touched Jake’s lips, caressed his hip, things that Dirk had dreamed about doing for years. Thrown in his face, burned into his brain.  
  
‘This isn’t even the half of it,’ the robot said.  
‘I had sex with Jake,' is what he meant. ‘And he loves me, not you.’  
  
Not even the rational part of Dirk's brain could calm the searing hatred and despair that those recent memories elicited in him.  
  
He couldn’t tear apart Brobot now because the robot was already dead. But he could fuck up Jake. And then fuck up himself by being the cause of Jake’s anger and sadness. Like a perverse version of his desire to help people improve, he would destroy them and himself instead. The sensible, normal Dirk doesn’t even know why he’s doing this. The whole conversation has become a runaway train of dangerous emotions, too much momentum to stop and terribly destructive. And it's going to derail any moment now.  
  
"After my conversation with the auto-responder, I resolved to treat it and Brobot more like people with emotions, and I bet you can find the chat log for it simply enough. But the thing is, I treated Brobot more like a person because he really had emotions and the like, too, and I got to know him," Jake says, obviously omitting some important personal details for Dirk's sake. At least, trying to, though his best bro actually already knows a good chunk. Not that he's jumping at the opportunity to dwell on it regardless.  
  
"I became good friends with him, like with you, but he ended up helping me... remove the uranium from him." Jake's glad he's still not looking exactly at Dirk for the moment because he can feel the threat of tears in his eyes. "Of course, I miss him."  
  
And with that, Dirk blows up. Any common sense or rationality he might have had flies out the window. The promises he made to Brobot, his own fucking words about helping Jake recover from his loss, about making him smile, about not taking advantage of his weakened position. They didn’t even exist any more as far as this suddenly overwhelming rage was concerned. Jake was still bullshitting around instead of getting angry and upset. Why the fuck wasn’t he getting angry at Dirk? Why the fuck couldn’t he have just said he was upset with what happened instead of letting Dirk dwell in tortuous guilt and jealousy?  
  
“The fuck, Jake? You say we’re good friends but why are you only telling me about this shit now? Do you not trust me? If you were upset about Brobot you could have said something to me and I would have been a good bro and helped however I could. But you didn’t. You went around with your chipper old-timey best pal act like everything was goddamn sunshine and adventures and kept me in the dark. If you miss him, why the fuck have you been playing like you were okay?”  
  
Dirk is rounding on Jake now, looking increasingly furious but somehow managing to keep his voice level. But the avalanche of words and emotions is only gaining momentum. He doesn’t even remember that he’s still shirtless. He barely remembers where they are.  
  
“You know what? Don’t even fucking answer that! There’s no fucking point because I already know why you didn’t want me to see you upset. And I know that if you answer, you are just going to feed me more motherfucking cagey horseshit clearly intended to cover up the fact that you totally FUCKED THE ROBOT I CREATED FOR YOU!”  
  
He hadn’t actually intended to say that or even sound angry, but Dirk ended up all but shouting the last half of the monologue. He didn’t want Jake to know that he knew about their relationship, but it looks like that cover is blown, just like any sort of cool he might have had. He doesn’t even care.  
  
“And don’t even try to fucking deny it, English,” he hisses. “I’m not a naïve little bitch who is going to believe that shit didn’t go down between you two. He fucking showed me you asleep next to him.” Dirk nearly chokes on that, feeling nauseous again, but he’s too angry to stop. His voice, still thick with venom, breaks a little. “I heard you say you might love him.”  
  
And this is why it is dangerous to keep emotions bottled up all the time. And this is also why Dirk didn’t like to do anything, especially speak, without careful planning. Words especially tended to get the best of him and he would end up losing his cool and expressing things that he didn’t want to; like the fact that he was sick with jealousy and heartbreak and guilt over what happened with Jake and Brobot.  
  
Something collides into Dirk's cheek, knocking him flat on his back. It's definitely going to bruise over later. It quickly becomes obvious what the hell hit him when he looks up at a righteously pissed Jake English, rubbing the knuckles of his right hand, the same knuckles that made contact with the shade-clad face only a moment ago.  
  
"You knew?" Jake asks, some venom in his own voice from this new information. "YOU KNEW?! And you still just let me knock him off like I'm some sort of fucking MONSTER! I was hiding and suppressing how this was affecting me, but not just for your delicate sensibilities, I assure you! You're not the only person depending on me and I didn't want to fritter away valuable time in this game thinking about-"  
  
He looks down at his hands again, thinking to when Brobot was enveloping them in his own, helping to pull out his heart. "About how I had to... basically take part in some murder or assisted suicide. Why didn't you impede it if you knew?! Why did he have to expire like this?! Were you getting your jollies from the whole thing, shitting all over my feelings? With what you've been saying, it certainly appears plausible!"  
  
Dirk looks dazed and a bit shocked as he brings his hand up to his face to gingerly feel where he was just clouted. The pain in his jaw is agonizing and his lip and nose don’t feel so great either. Goddamn could English throw a punch. He draws his fingers away and there is blood on them. He’s not sure if it is from his lip or his nose or both but it doesn’t really matter. Shakily getting to his feet (the throbbing intensifies in a horrible way, making everything spin), he takes the shirt hanging over his shoulder and carefully wipes it across his face, red stains blooming on the fabric. It must be his nose. He doesn’t think his lip could be bleeding that much. The shirt gets thrown on the ground as Dirk confronts Jake.  
  
The punch woke something up in him; Dirk had deserved it. It was a relief in a way, to know that Jake was angry with him for what he did. The guilt, while still present, no longer felt like some clandestine burden from hell. Jake knew about it now. He was being taught a lesson. Role-reversal. It didn’t feel good, but it was helpful.  
  
“Brobot’s deactivation was as much by his own hands as it was by yours or mine. And why didn’t I stop him?” In his whirring, pounding brain, he’s running through reasons.  
  
Because it was a lesson— no it fucking wasn’t. Because it was what was best for you— no that is clearly a fucking lie no stop...  
Because— because _I_ want you.  
Because I love you.  
  
Dirk’s now swollen lips are shut tightly and his body is stiff, burdened with hatred and misery. Hidden behind the shades, his orange eyes bore into Jake. Finally he answers, bitterness coating his words. “I don’t think it even fucking matters anymore.”  
  
“So let’s fucking lay it on the table, English. You’ve clearly got some hostility towards me for making you kill off your robot boyfriend.” He was still twisting that knife. Fuck everything. “And I’m not feeling all that amicable either.”  
  
His face is flushed a dangerous red, now smeared with blood, and he clenches his jaw tightly. There was only one way he could deal with this. He hisses it through his gritted teeth, with a hand slowly going to the sword at his side and feet sliding into position. “You. Me. Strife. Right now.”


	5. In which there are strifes and consorts.

Jake glares back at Dirk in barely restrained rage and, wanting to be fair since he's fairly certain that his supposed friend will want to use his sword, he pulls a machete out of his sylladex. He doesn't tend to use it as a weapon, just a tool for cutting down vegetation in his excursions. "I'm assuming you'll want to strife with weapons?" Jake asks, not really caring much about the answer.

Either way, he knows that Dirk has him outclassed in strifing skills, but he's not about to let that bastard go scot-free after everything he's said and done. He thought he could trust his best bro, but if they need to duke it out, then that's fine by him. Maybe in some small way, it can give him a little extra closure. Despite the fury, he feels the beginnings of tears again but tries to blink them away. He's not about to show a weakness like that to Dirk at a time like this.

Dirk doesn’t even bother replying. He’s too busy lunging at Jake, katana slashing to the side to strike the machete with a clang. It really isn’t a fighting weapon and as he bears down on Jake, who is trying valiantly to hold him back, he taunts, “It’s pretty goddamn charming that you assumed I couldn’t handle your shitty pistols. Fatal mistake, bro.”

The machete goes flying out of Jake’s hands with a twist of Dirk’s wrist. He brings his face right up into his opponent’s, noticing the tears that are forming but not saying anything. The strife is bringing Dirk back to sanity though; the intense rage is definitely dissipating. He gives Jake about a second to pull out the guns to block before bringing the sword down.

The guns only manage to block so well so Jake immediately jumps back, shooting near Dirk's feet to try to coax a bit more distance between them. After all, speed is the biggest disparity between them with Dirk having a severe advantage. Jake doesn't intend to just allow Dirk to win. "I'm not being 'goddamn charming' here! Just cut the crap with that sword of yours!"

“Make me,” Dirk retorts childishly as he uses his ninja speed to dance away from the bullets burning by his feet. They make him move more cautiously and definitely keep him from getting too close to Jake, but that’s fine. Bullets are a finite thing. English will have to reload eventually. Then he can strike. Strider plays the waiting game while in continuous motion from dodging the shells that Jake fires every time he attempts to close in.

Then the bullets are finally gone and he flashes towards his opponent like lightning as Jake ejects the empty magazines and whips out fresh ones with speed that honestly surprises Dirk. (It makes sense though, when he think about it; the boy's pro with guns.) He’s just about to rack the slide of one of the Berettas when Dirk slams the blunt side of his sword against Jake’s hand, sending the pistol in his grip flying. He turns to bring the blade down again but Jake has rolled out of the way, finishing the reload of his second deadly firearm.

Dirk makes an irritated noise and attempts to move in again. “Fuck you and your gun fetish.”

In another skillful bit of gunplay, Jake fires at the blade of Dirk's sword, right near the hilt and causing it to forcefully knock out of Dirk's hand in his surprise at the shot. While he knows his friend could easily scoop the sword back up with his speed, Jake decides to make a challenge in place of the impending action by tossing his other pistol aside. His trust for Strider has been sorely shaken, but he at least trusts him not to genuinely attempt killing him in this scuffle.

"I don't need any firearms to kick your sorry ass," Jake states very plainly, glaring daggers at him. Flash-stepping be damned, he's going to teach Dirk a lesson no matter how many times he might be knocked down. "Let's settle this with some proper fisticuffs, like real men."

Tilting down the shades so his narrowed orange eyes are visible, Dirk glares right back at his ex-bff. Then in a badass as fuck move, he points his index finger at Jake then promptly flips his thumb down towards the ground in a gesture that says exactly the same thing he does. “You’re going down, English.”

He flash-steps over and throws a fist towards Jake’s face, practically snarling. He’s not as adept at fighting without his sword. In fact, Dirk is almost positive that in terms of sheer strength, Jake’s got him beat. But he’s faster and he’s hoping that he can land a few hits before Jake sends him sprawling again.

Jake grunts at the punch to the face, stumbling back in surprise with a split lip and just barely managing to catch himself from falling over entirely. He's not too surprised or disappointed by the flash-stepping since of course Dirk would use it. That's his finest advantage in combat, after all. It's almost kind of nice in a way to have him not only accept the new terms without complaint or cheating but also that he's not going entirely easy on Jake regardless of their crumbling friendship.

Despite the tiniest bit of relief he finds in that, Jake attempts placing his arms up to covers his face and neck a bit from the blows. Not that it'll probably do much good. If Dirk wants to hit him somewhere in particular, he can do just that with his speed until Jake can subdue him with another hit. If he can manage to land another hit. He no longer has the element of surprise on his side and is firmly on the defensive side of things for the moment.

Jake’s arms leave his stomach unprotected and so Dirk attempts to take advantage of that, ramming his leather covered hand into English’s tightened abdomen. But Jake is expecting this and turns his body to the side, so while Dirk’s fist still connects, the blow mostly glances off rather than leaving him doubled over and vulnerable.

Strider swears through bared teeth. He feels good though. It feels good to be doing this. The aggression is still there but it isn’t as needlessly antagonistic. Thank god for strifing; it worked better for Dirk than any counseling ever would. He tries to take a wide swing for Jake’s now-bruised jaw but the sight of the bloodied lip slows Dirk up for a fraction of a second. It’s enough time for Jake to react.

The reaction ends up being planting his fist into Dirk's side, right in the area under his ribcage. He's surprised to have seen what looked almost like hesitation. It almost makes him feel bad for taking the opening. Almost, but not entirely. In fact, he knocks Dirk down after, almost straddling his chest and punching his other cheek.

Dirk’s glasses are knocked off when his face gets punched yet again. He makes an involuntary groan of pain as the other side of his face gets wrecked and his vision goes blurry. Holy fucking shit, his nose hurts like a bitch and it’s throbbing in unison with his head now and his gut and his jaw and Jesus fuck. He thinks a rock sliced his stupidly bare back up when Jake threw him down too. Everything aches.

Jake can't keep himself from exploding verbally again, having Dirk down and stunned. He continues glowering at the other boy and screams, "Where do you get off being so high and mighty, huh?! I admit it! I hid something but so did you, and I-!"

He chokes up a little, feeling some tears and, worse, soon seeing some land on Dirk's cheeks. Damn. He feels so weak right now. "I keep holding it back and- and I miss him and I want to thrash the crud out of you but... Why can't I just persist in it?!"

He can feel wetness on his face and figures it must just be his nose bleeding again, but when his sight stops fizzling out and clears up, he can see those beautiful (a completely objective aesthetic analysis, not based on any personal biases— he’s giving those up) green eyes filling with tears. He watches, dazed, as one slides off Jake’s cheek and then feels an accompanying soft patter on his face. Ah.

Jake is screaming at him and Dirk would much rather have him punch his face some more than hear the pain in his best friend’s voice. No dice though. It looks like the Strider beatdown is over, at least for right now. If he was as ruthless as he was acting earlier, he should take advantage of this display of weakness. Jake is practically an open target. Except he doesn’t think he can move; he doesn't really have it in him to fight back anymore either. Weirdly out of character, but hey. Maybe he has a concussion.

Dirk looks at Jake for a long moment, more little droplets landing on his face, probably mixing with the blood that he's sure is just smeared all over. Finally he decides to do something that hopefully demonstrates that he’s gotten all of his own emotions under control again.

"'M s-sorry," he quietly slurs up at Jake, a little blood flecking out from his mouth. Dirk gives a weak little chuckle and then coughs to clear his throat, trying not to wince as his body screams in protest. “You win but you can keep hitting me if you want. Wouldn't blame you. An' you might as well take advantage of this since it’s never gonna happen again.”

Just because he lost doesn’t mean he can’t still taunt.

The sides of Jake's fists land on Dirk's chest in a weaker hit. It's enough to cause a wince, but he doesn't have the heart to do any more to him. There's even a ghost of a fond smile despite the tears and smoldered anger. "You're so agitating sometimes..."

Jake looks up over at the trees a moderate distance away, almost thinking he saw something in his peripheral vision for a moment. That was weird. He shakes his head a little, wondering if he got punched harder then he thought, felt, or reacted to... That doesn't even make sense. Whatever's going on, he stands up and carefully steps aside, offering a hand so that Strider can stand back up.

The battered boy lets out another little groan of pain as he takes Jake’s hand and manages to stand, body protesting all the way. But Jake almost smiled and that was enough to make him push aside the fact that the dude just beat the shit out of him.

Dirk takes a moment to spit the blood out of his mouth once he’s standing. Sick. He picks up his shades but doesn’t put them on, thinking that his nose probably doesn’t need anything resting on it at the moment. “What’re you looking at?” He asks, inspecting his ribs, which are already beginning to blossom with blue and purple.

"I thought I saw something mostly out of view over there," Jake replies, giving a little shrug. Even if it was something, it doesn't appear to be there anymore.

He touches his bottom lip and looks at his hand. The bleeding's stopped, but his face is definitely bruised. He was far luckier in that strife than Dirk had been, but only for the hesitation he took advantage of. Jake quickly wipes his eyes and slightly askew glasses, adjusting them back in the process, and turns back to his... friend? "Land's sakes alive, I did a real number on you. We might just require a more prolonged break."

Jake stashes his Berettas back in his specibus, feeling a little less uneasy about the fact that there's a small chance that they're being watched. If anyone or anything tries to get the drop on them, he'll be ready for sure. It'll be a particularly good detail considering the whooping he gave Dirk. He might be a bit out of commission.

Dirk looks around but doesn’t see anything. He’s slightly concerned though, because if an enemy comes after them right now, he’s pretty much fucked. 

"You, without a doubt, completely wrecked my shit," he agrees, a small pained smile on his lips, from both the actual pain he was feeling and the metaphorical pain from admitting defeat.

“I don’t know where we can go that won’t likely be compromised by douchebags trying to get the jump on us,” he says, moving towards where he left his shirt. But it didn’t seem to be where he thought it was. In fact, looking around, it didn’t seem to be anywhere at all. “The fuck?”

“NYUM!” Dirk turns towards the noise and- Surprise! There is a green... thing holding his shirt. He stares at it, and it stares back with big twirling eyes. Chameleon, he realizes. Okay.

Jake steps in front of Dirk protectively, knowing that injuries and strifing don't mix at all and the other boy is far more injured than him. He eyes the chameleon creature in mild suspicion but it appears that the cute creature follows a certain pattern he knows of. He glances back at Dirk as he asks, "Is this... a consort of LOSAE?"

When Jake steps in front of him, Dirk can’t help but gape. The fact that after all of this, some part of English still wants to keep his ex-friend safe... Well, it makes his heart twinge. Jake is a special person and he will be damned if he doesn’t prove his worth to the boy he so greatly wronged. BFFdom, consider yourself warned. Dirk is going to repair the shit out of you.

“Looks like it,” he replies quietly, still dwelling on the issue of making Jake his friend again. “A chameleon consort. Pretty cute.”

The adventurer turns to the Chameleon and kneels to its level, holding out a hand for either the shirt or a handshake if either option turns out valid. He speaks softly in an attempt not to frighten it and says, "Howdy, little fellow. We'd really appreciate the return of that shirt if that's cricket with you."

The chameleon’s eyes swivel around looking both at Dirk and Jake. It ponders the adventurer’s outstretched hand and tilts its head while he talks to it in the soothing tone. After Jake has finished his request, the little consort stares at them both in silence for a while. Dirk, staring back expectantly, can feel the aggravation growing in him and in his mind he takes back calling it cute. 

Finally its tongue darts out and sticks momentarily on to Jake’s hand with a little ‘nyum’ noise. “CRICKETS?! Nyumnyumnyumnyum!” The chameleon continues to make excited noises, long tongue flying out of its mouth in every direction, and Dirk looks like he wants to punt the thing.

Jake shudders unpleasantly at the tongue to hand contact. He's not entirely sure what to do when the Chameleon begins excitedly flipping its shit. "Uh. Sorry, it's a figure of speech."

He's also kind of hoping Dirk has another shirt captchalogued away. Jake's not entirely sure if the creature intends to return it or not. Then again, he doesn't even know certain things such as Dirk busily thinking of their now very unstable friendship and Jake's willingness to protect him anyway. Jake still understandably feels some betrayal and hurt, but he's not about to let Dirk suffer additional harm in his injured state and they still need to work together.

“Nyumnyu- OH,” says Chameleon, loudly and (what it thinks is) sagely. “OK! I LOVE CRICKETS. HI! DO YOU WANT THIS SHIRT BACK? IT ISN’T MINE! I CAN WEAR IT LIKE A HAT.” It puts the blooded white fabric in a bundle on its head and flicks its tongue out enthusiastically. “A SECRET HAT. ARE YOU SEEING THIS?! Nyum nyum nyum nyum nyum nyum nyum!”

The Chameleon's actions of wearing the shirt as a hat cause a snicker from Jake. It's actually kind of adorable, even if it is being irritating and obtuse. At least the consort is a friendly sort to an extent so far? He thinks he vaguely remembers Dirk saying something about his world's Alligator consorts tried to roast people but were also friendly. He hopes maybe his own are more friendly than that because it doesn't sound like they were at all unless Dirk was joking or something.

“Oh my fucking god.” Dirk’s expression is just completely filled with derision and irritation. Clearly this animal is lacking some serious brainpower. It’s almost as bad as the Alligators on LOBAS but they were a little more conniving, which was at least entertaining. He half limps over to the Chameleon and snatches the shirt from its head.

The consort stops spazzing and stares vacantly up at Dirk when its hat is taken away. Dirk glares back, orange eyes burning with hatred.

“YOU ARE COLORFUL AND FUNNY! Nyumnyumnyum,” it finally says in an excited tone, papping its tongue against the blonde’s bare stomach. Luckily it wasn’t painful, and it was clearly intended to be friendly anyway, even if it was annoying as fuck. “OK, BYE.”

Strider watches, almost in disbelief, as it turns around and starts to slowly wander into the forest, still nyuming happily. He quickly pulls on the bloodied shirt and stifles a cry of pain as the collar slides over his bruised face. Turning to Jake, he says, “I think we ought to follow it. I’m positive there will be more of them around and maybe they’ll have somewhere safe to rest.”

Jake nods in agreement to that suggestion and begins walking, feeling a slight pang of guilt at the pained sound Strider had made when pulling his shirt back on. Sure, Jake feels justified over a little bit of roughing up for what had happened, and he probably would've done more if it weren't for Brobot being so accepting of the deactivation, but it still sucks seeing his friend hurt while they're in the middle of the game. The very slight limp as they walk does concern him, though. Maybe he twisted his ankle a little while they fought? He looks at it for a little longer as they follow the chameleon and asks, "Did you hurt it?"

“It just hurts to move. Don’t worry about it,” Dirk says dismissively, pursing his lips to keep any pain from his expression. Part of his wobbly gait is because his lower back feels like a knife is being driven into the muscles every time he moves- thinks he must have landed weird when he was pushed down and pinched a nerve or something. The other part is probably because he’s just feeling dizzy. He only got hit in the face twice, but both those times were pretty substantial. His face hurts and his head hurts and where Jake bruised his ribs hurts and his back hurts. A little rest would be so nice.

Still, he doesn’t want Jake to worry- this was all shit he deserved, after all- so he attempts to walk a little straighter and slips on his shades to hide any wincing. It doesn’t matter much though because the consort has arrived at a little village of chameleons, all nyuming all over the place.

The colorful village obviously catches Jake's eye, judging from the broad grin on his face while he glances around curiously. While it does look small, tiny in fact, it doesn't take long for them to notice that there are various ways the Chameleons are climbing up and down the trees. Both of the boys look up to see what's the hubbub and realize that, while there are a few modest huts on the ground, most of the buildings of the village are nestled up in the canopy of the trees. They even appear to have pulley systems and the like in place to move objects from the ground to the buildings and vice-versa more easily.

Now Jake's face is lighting up with interest at this sight. He keeps gazing at it with wide eyes and exclaims, "Whoa! They're more ingenious than I'd have guessed!"

Dirk is already moving (albeit slowly) towards a rope attached to a pulley when Jake makes his exclamation. He bends down (holy shit fuck ouch) next to a Chameleon loading jars of water and wiggling bugs and roots onto a platform to be raised up into the canopy. The consort stops and turns when one of its eyes finds Dirk; it nyums in greeting. “Hello! Your face looks quite silly! Did you know this?”

“No, but I figured as much,” Dirk replies with a small sigh, bringing a hand up to touch his swollen jaw. He really just wanted to know more about this fascinating little society— what was its story? Did it evolve on its own? Was it a game construct? How the fuck did they figure out how to make pulleys? The alligators on LOBAS didn’t have anything nearly this complicated, though they took quickly to most of his ideas on how to improve their culture. He was expecting horse races and puppet shows when he visited again. “So how did you Chameleons figure out to do all of this?”

Jake is wondering a certain amount of the same things as Dirk is of the consort village. How did they do this since they appear so simplistic? Not that pulleys don't have a certain amount of simplicity to them, but they're a smart invention for a society of very simple creatures. Besides that, the whole village looks more vibrant and rad than he expected. It's small, but so interesting and he wants to explore it... maybe after some rest.

“Oh gosh, I don’t know,” the Chameleon responds after a moment of empty stares. Then it snaps its tongue in and out cheerfully. ”It really looks like you got stuck in the middle of a color change! I hate when that happens!”

The adventurer casually strolls up to another Chameleon and genially begins speaking with it. They're a bit too far away from Dirk for him to hear, not that he's all that concerned of it. The Chameleon begins speaking in response, occasionally sticking out its tongue with a "nyum" sound.

Dirk tries his hardest not to release some wicked drubbings onto the reptile. Who decided to make the consorts in this game so stupid? “It's just a couple contusions. And some blood, I guess.”

He decides not to bother asking this Chameleon any more questions about the village since it’s clear that they are more interested in the fact that he looks like an ogre right now. A brogre. Good one. He stands up to see if Jake has had any more luck than him and blackness starts eating at his vision. Shit. It clears quickly but everything is spinning in a terrible way now.

Fortunately, the talk between Jake and the Chameleon has concluded by then and he rushes over when he sees Dirk wobbling from disorientation.

"Shit." He carefully grasps the other boy's upper arms to help support him and motions to one of the huts on the ground, saying, "Come on, Strider. The Chameleon said resting in the building over there is permissible."

“Calm your tits, English. I’m fine, I’m okay,” Dirk frowns as he immediately tries to pull out of the adventurer’s grip- but fuck it hurts to do that and probably having some backup isn’t a terrible idea. So he keeps his mouth shut and allows Jake to help him to the hut.

It’s pretty clear to Dirk that he fucked up bad with Jake. And by pretty clear, he means that it’s so fucking obvious that it isn’t even worth pointing out. That’s okay though. Jake isn’t acting outright aggressively hostile towards him, only distrusting and upset if the occasional and sudden bouts of physical distance are anything to go by; which makes sense because he lied so much and caused his best friend hella emotional distress.

So, in Strider’s mind, Jake English is like a mountain. This is a recent analogy Dirk has come up with, based both on the “elevation” part of his conksuck planet and the way he sees their friendship now. Anyway, Jake is this mountain. Not one of the shitty, steep as fuck, designed to let you fall to your doom mountains that are in the majority on this planet. But like a sort of easy mountain to climb, mostly difficult because it does shit that makes you wonder why you even wanted to climb the thing in the first place; like it is covered in tombs (even though the chances of you dying on the mountain are zero) and it is covered with caves filled with skulls and some spectacularly mediocre movies and blue women. So the entire time, you are just thinking to yourself, why? But it is kind of interesting and endearing and by the time you get to the peak, you and this mountain have been through some real shit and you are best friends (and maybe you also fall in love with the view from the top, but whatever).

But actually the mountain turns out to be a long-dormant volcano which is cool, except one day you, like an asshole, manage to do something fucked up enough to set it off and you go tumbling down the other side of the mountain and land right on your ass at the base. And— here comes the important and symbolic part— it’s a lot steeper on this side. No one ever normally climbs the side that’s steeper because that doesn’t make any fucking sense. It’s clearly not meant to be climbed this way. But the lava has blocked off the other side and this mountain means too much to you to leave so you start climbing the steeper side, knowing that it is going to be difficult.

Hopefully, Dirk thinks, he will be able to reach the peak again. That’s really all he wants. He doesn’t care about the view, he just wants to get to the top and be able to chill with mountain again.

Jesus, just how hard did he get hit?

The hut is mostly sparse except for some little holes in the dirt on part of the ground in the hut, lined with scraps of fabric that look like they came from imps. Apparently that's what the Chameleons tend to sleep in if on the ground. Jake supposes it sort of makes sense in a basic animal sort of way, but they're humans and aching from a strife and exploring that damned ruin earlier.

At least Jake was slightly prepared for this excursion into the game, though. He uncaptchalogues a sleeping bag, a pillow, and a blanket. He always did remember his grandma's advice about preparedness, even if he doesn't particularly remember her in a personal sense as significantly as he used to. Sometimes he's not sure if he remembers her all that correctly and it worries him. He certainly wants to keep her in mind. Jake spreads out the sleeping bag first and looks up at Dirk. "You'll need the padding since I somewhat beat the tar out of you. I'll take the blanket and pillow and we can divvy those scraps if we need to."

“I don’t—“ Dirk starts to protest that Jake should take the more comfortable sleeping bag but Jake looks at him severely, cutting him off. He intelligently decides that it isn’t worth the argument likely to ensue if he keeps pressing the issue. “Thank you,” he finishes lamely.

Still, he's not comfortable with letting Jake make those sorts of sacrifices for him (not that the other boy is really giving up anything huge but whatever). He pulls all of the fabric scraps near his bed into his arms and gently tosses them down next to where Jake has put his pillow. Dirk looks back at Jake as he stiffly bends and spreads the bits of cloth out like a bed. “You can have these. The ground is too hard to sleep on without padding. The sleeping bag is enough for me.”

With that he shakily walks the couple of feet to his sleeping bag and slowly lowers himself down to the ground, hissing when his ribs and back pulse with pain. He gingerly settles himself inside of the warm cocoon of fabric. “Fuck,” he quietly groans as his bruised back starts a major protest against the hard ground underneath it, so he rolls onto his side (the side that Jake didn’t slam his fist into) and ends up facing Jake’s bed. Quietly, he watches his friend(?) get his sleeping area ready.

Jake quietly finishes his own, a decent distance away from Dirk considering the size of the hut, and settles in to rest a little. Despite the shaky issues between them, he's at least facing in Dirk's direction and not attempting to ignore his presence. Keeping the distance there might not have even been an entirely conscious choice.

He offers a small smile from where he's laying, but that's about it so far. Not really surprising after they both hid such important facts from each other and caused a real wreck of things. Jake has a feeling that Dirk was trying to hide his own side of things out of awkwardness and having no clue how to go about addressing the issue. It's not every day that someone builds a robot for their best friend, then said best friend suddenly has a relationship with the robot and even has sex. That's kind of the same reason Jake hadn't brought it up; it's just a weird subject to broach.

Jake closes his eyes and his smile fades as he tries to get a little shut-eye, but... Fuck. He just misses Brobot. He can't stand that someone so close is dead and now he's injured Dirk, too. Jake thought he felt like a heel back when he was trying to drive Crabdad away with bullets but then thought maybe he was hungry and just after food, but this takes the cake!

Dirk, when Jake closes his eyes, removes his shades and captchalogues them, simultaneously pulling Cal and a cat plush out from his sylladex. Cal snuggles into his chest, wrapping his arms around Dirk’s neck and the plush gets shoved under his aching head, serving as a pillow while he continues to watch Jake. English’s face looks distressed, sad, clearly unable to fall asleep— it makes Dirk start mentally running through ways to comfort him. He looks down and hugs the little dude in his arms tightly to his body, ignoring the ache, then glances back at Jake’s pained expression.

With a small cough to get Jake’s attention, Dirk untangles Lil’ Cal’s limbs from his body and leans out from the warmth of his sleeping bag, holding the puppet out to his friend in an attempt to bridge the gap between them.

“Hee hee?” Cal giggles in a soft, questioning way while a noodly orange arm reaches for Jake.

“He wants to see you,” Dirk explains quietly, orange eyes soft as they stare into Jake’s now-open green ones.

At first, Jake almost looks confused, glancing from Dirk to the puppet, but then it dawns on him what the other boy is trying to do. He leans over as well, carefully grasping Lil' Cal and grinning fondly at his (hopefully still) friend as he does. Laying back on his makeshift sleeping area, Jake curls up again and hugs the puppet. "Thanks, Dirk."

Weird as Lil' Cal could probably be perceived by some people, it's comforting to be able to hold something right about now. The fact that Dirk willingly handed it over for the sake of comforting is something else, too. He imagines that Dirk also isn't the type to begrudge a strife, but it's nice to have some proof of that and also have something, and someone as well, nearby so he doesn't feel so alone.

Ignoring the slight loneliness that the lack of Cal gives him, Dirk returns Jake’s smile. Lil’ Cal is the biggest comfort he knows. The puppet is practically his guardian; essentially having taken the place of his bro after the Batterwitch murdered him so long ago, not that that bit of musing makes sense. Plus, little dude is the best listener and cuddler ever. And it is nice to hold something while you are asleep, it makes you feel less alone— which, when Dirk thinks about it, is something that Jake has been dealing with his whole life. So no regrets about sharing; it’s clear that Jake needs Cal more right now.

Jake's expression looks about as vulnerable as Dirk's as he asks, "Does this mean we're still pals?"

Dirk really did mean it when he told Brobot that he wanted to help Jake be happy again. He would put the adventurer’s well-being over his own any day. He wants to be there for Jake and have his trust and not ever deceive or hurt him again. He is going to try to be the greatest bro ever from now on and maybe he can fix the ways he fucked up.

So when Jake asks him about their friendship, he looks away quickly, feeling a surge of remorse that he was shitty enough to make his best friend think that Dirk didn’t want to be his bro after getting his ass kicked (which he deserved anyway). “That best bro five-ever fist bump was a promise that I’m not about to break, Jake,” he replies seriously, pulling himself together enough to meet Jake’s eyes again. Then, managing a small, playful sort of smile— “If you’ll still have me.”

"Of course," Jake replies with barely a hitch. "As if you have to wonder."

He holds up a hand before Dirk can give a response, still carefully holding Lil' Cal with the other arm. "Erm. I just sense that I should add that perhaps next time shit goes down, we should be more straightforward to begin with? We both botched things up with this... Brobot situation."

Jake hugs the puppet again, managing to retain a small grin this time. He does feel more comfortable from Dirk's reassurance and holding Lil' Cal at the moment. He hopes he didn't make things awkward by mentioning Brobot or his relationship. He's not going to pretend it was an event that didn't exist, but he doesn't want to pour salt in the wound of withholding information from his friend. It actually just dawned on him that maybe it was a fit of jealousy since Dirk does sometimes appear a bit smitten. The theory is also reenforced by things from AR and Brobot while he was around.

Dirk nods, immensely relieved by the acceptance of his friendship. He doesn’t even flinch at the mention of Brobot and sort of surprises himself by honestly feeling nothing but forgiveness towards his robot and pity about the whole relationship. The jealousy seems to be flushed from his brain, which is quite a relief. All he wants to focus on right now is repairing Jake’s trust and it would be difficult to do while worrying about romance tinged feelings. 

“I agree. It would be in our best interest to not pull this shit if we want to have a relationship based on things other than our potential as human punching bags.” He watches Jake cuddle up with his puppet and in a soft voice adds, “I know it doesn’t mean much now, but. I’m so sorry about Brobot, Jake.”

Jake beams at his renewed best bro's reply, even with the apology reminding him of what he lost, and says, "I forgive you, Bro. I'm just pleased we've reached an understanding. That's the most bully outcome I could expect."

Dirk draws the sleeping bag up, feeling suddenly overwhelmingly tired. Lying down has made all of his pain let up enough to let him fall sleep and his body is taking advantage of that by shutting down for repairs. He closes his eyes right after he sleepily slurs, “I promise I won’t hurt you like that ever again.” Then he's asleep.

At that, Jake hides his face by way of still holding Lil' Cal. Dirk's already asleep and he has no idea what got him to do this, but he looks at the puppet and murmurs, "Can you believe him? Still injured in the game of all places and saying he won't hurt my dadblasted feelings of all things. Ridiculous... But I'm glad to have his camaraderie again. Don't think I could lose him, too..." He closes his eyes and quickly nods off, still snuggled up to Dirk's puppet.

His dreams feel a bit more abstract than usual, all feelings and colors and just a weird combination of things. Of course, those feelings he's noted pertain to what happened with Brobot. Happiness at the time he had, grief for time removed, anger at both Dirk and Brobot making it end... He almost feels like he's at some some last bit of closure, though. After all, he's forgiven his friends, both the live one and the dead one, not that there's any way to tell Brobot of that, but he likes to think that the robot would know it.

Everything around him seems to shift in the odd dreamscape and he finds himself in some black void. Someone approaches from out in that seemingly endless place, slow and steady, and Jake's not sure what to think. The figure is close enough to identify by now, if he knew her. It's some sort of alien girl or something with horns and a blue dress. Under normal circumstances, he'd find her to be a lovely gal, but he can't bring himself to think that way at this time. She smiles and waves to him. Jake returns the gestures, wanting to acknowledge her friendliness. Is this supposed to be some weird bit of psychology? Some of that mumbo-jumbo where dreams have ridiculous symbolism instead of the brain just saying what the hell it wants to say? He's always found that sort of concept to be ridiculous.

\------------

Dirk is the first to wake up. Being in possession of a still-living, non-injured dream self was pretty sweet... Or at least he figured it was because, bizarrely, when he transferred his focus to that half of his split consciousness, all he remembers doing is picking up a well-worn piece of the garbage Dersites call media and seeing (for probably the hundredth time) Jake’s dead face plastered on the front, surrounded by red and blue flowers.

While he knows it is likely that he wandered around on Derse in his sleep, he honestly can’t remember a single thing after looking at the lifeless Page of Hope on the shitty paper, some unexpected drops of saline leaking out of his eyes. It’s a little disturbing to have that blank, but nothing bad seems to have happened. Maybe it is a thing with dual awareness to switch back to the real world while unconscious. Maybe it was just his injuries.

Dirk peers around the hut before turning his eyes to the still-sleeping Jake. The boy is wrapped up in the puppets arms and Cal’s head is tucked under his chin, buried into Jake’s chest. It’s sweet and makes Strider’s lips turn upward but that feels really weird. His face is stiff and cracked and it takes after a moment he realizes it’s the dried blood on his skin. A quick assessment of the damage to his body finds him sore and more colorfully bruised than before but the pain is now duller than stabbing or throbbing. He slowly pulls himself out of the bag and looks for some water to wash his face.

Several minutes later, Jake finally wakes up as well to see the sleeping bag empty. He gasps in surprise and sits up, Lil' Cal still clinging onto him as he does so. Where did Dirk wander off to? He stands up, holding Lil' Cal as he does because he knows better than to leave the puppet where the Chameleons can wander in and swipe it. He walks outside of the hut to see if he can find his pal anywhere nearby.

After being gaped at and told he “looks like a puffy rainbow!” by several Chameleons, Dirk was finally directed to a little pool nearby. At the edge of the water, he peers down at his reflection with distaste, noting the blood and swelling and bruising on his cheeks and lip. Thankfully his nose wasn’t broken, though he had some dark purple running across the bridge and under his eyes. All and all, he looked like shit. But it could be worse.

Taking handfuls of water, he splashes and softly rubs the blood from his face, grimacing as red droplets run off his chin and stain the water.

It doesn't take much effort for Jake to find Dirk, considering how he sticks out like a sore thumb in the village of Chameleons. He strolls up with Cal in his arms and sits next to his friend. Damn, Dirk's bruising looks worse now. Jake tries to ignore them for the sake of not making things weird at the moment. "Aloha, Dirk. What's on the agenda?"

Dirk stares incredulously at Jake for the chipper greeting. As thankful as he is that his best friend isn’t holding grudges and doesn’t seem mad at all, he wasn’t quite prepared for luau adventure English. Still, it makes him smile a little, because it means he’s feeling happier. And it is especially grin-worthy to see Lil’ Cal all cuddled in Jake’s arms and being cared for.

“Hey, little dude,” he coos at his puppet, wiping his face dry on a miraculously clean section of his shirt. He looks up at his friend and nods in greeting. ”Jake.”

The adventurer chuckles at the affectionate greeting to Cal. Dirk can be so goofy for such a cool guy.

Strider had not planned out what to do once he cleaned up. He knew he wanted to investigate the structures up the canopy and see if he could find anything interesting up there. It would probably be nice to have Jake there to diffuse attention to his injuries. “If you’d like to accompany me, I am going to take a platform up into the canopy to see if there is anything of interest there. But I’m going to finish my ablution and damage evaluation first.”

"Sounds spiffing to me." Jake's not going to miss a chance to explore. It would be totally absurd not to, even without his innate adventure-lust. These are the consorts of his world; he needs to get to know and defend them. Not only that, but he does have his own curiosities over the Chameleon village, mostly what the rest is like up in those little tree-houses.

At this, he pulls up his shirt up slightly, checking out his side. There is a little resistance to this as some dried blood from his back has stuck the fabric to his skin, but he manages to raise it enough to see his bruise. It didn’t look so bad, but he still looks pointedly at Jake before he starts joking, hoping that he isn't making his friend feel guilty. “It’s honestly embarrassing that I let you do this much damage. Remind me that I will have to seek vengeance— I’m thinking a good old English ass kicking— for this sullying of my honor.”

"Ha! I'd like to see you try," Jake quips in return, clearly catching the humor in it. "If you really do have a hankering for me to serve your bum back to you again, then we could just do wrestling. We'd be able to spar with far less injuries."

Then, thinking of the dried blood gluing on his shirt, he asks, “Hey, can you check out my back for me?”

"Certainly," Jake says with a compliant nod. He doesn't mind helping out since he's the one who caused the damage and they still need to survive through teamwork. He shifts behind his friend and takes a peek. There's a scabbed over cut that Dirk fortunately didn't reopen with the removal of his shirt. "Hm... It's not reopened or anything, but washing and bandaging it couldn't hurt... Well, metaphorically, anyway."

“I don’t have a ‘hankering’ for you to serve me anything at the moment, especially my own wounded ass. But I’ll take you up on that offer as soon as I can look at my reflection without gagging.” Dirk says with a little grin. “It shouldn’t take too long. My handsome outmatches any contusions you might have inflicted. Purple is a good color on me.”

"Trust me, I wouldn't even be able to give you a good drubbing for trying to accept that challenge right now." Jake laughs and continues to say, "Once your finished with this on the mend stage, I'll accept the challenge. And, yes, all of the remaining ladies and gents are crying for the tragic predicament that you and your majestic face are in."

Strider stays still while Jake looks at his back injury. “And you are going to tell me that, since you are always jumping ass-first into temple ruins and off mountains and shit, you most definitely have a first aid kit or something on you, right? And you can wrap me up, no problem?” He asks over his shoulder after Jake gives him the report. He’s definitely hoping for a first aid kit, though he supposes that if worse comes to worse, he can always ask the Chameleon’s if they have medical supplies.

The adventurer takes Dirk's shirt out of his hand, giving him Lil' Cal to hold instead, and wets a corner of said shirt in the pool of water. He looks pretty proud of himself as he says, "Of course I do. I might not ponder over things as heavily as you, but my grandmother had been an advocate of preparedness. Basically, I'm constantly armed to the teeth and my sylladex is chock full of rations, medical supplies, and computers."

Dirk's probably uninterested in most of the information computer-wise, though, since he hates all of the ones Jake has other than his old husktop and Brobot's shades. He and Roxy are oh-so-convinced that they're brainwashing him and that the same can be said for Jane's tiaratop. He wouldn't be surprised about the tiaratop, though. After all, Crocker Corp. did exile his grandmother.

Jake very gently cleans off the dried blood from the wound and uncaptchalogues some medicine and a large adhesive bandage. He applies everything and then pats Dirk on an uninjured area of his back. "That should do it."

“Thanks, Jake,” Dirk replies, stretching slightly. He takes the shirt back and dunks it in the water, rubbing most of the blood out. It’s still majorly stained a sort of rusty color but whatever. He lays it on a nearby rock to dry.

While Jake is trying to fit his supplies back into his puzzle modus, Dirk holds Lil’ Cal out at arms length and looks at him fondly. “How did you sleep, Cal?“

“Haa haa haa haa!” The puppet shakes with apparent excitement. His skinny appendages flop everywhere.

“What’s that, little dude?” Dirk tilts his head as Cal continues to vibrate with laughter. “You think I’m better in bed than English?”

The puppet’s head doesn’t so much nod as it does snap up and down violently and repeatedly as Dirk looks properly scandalized, though Jake is currently behind him so the brilliance of his acting is lost. “Dude, shh. He’s right here. No, Cal, stop. Don’t make him feel bad. He can’t help his inferiority— he’s not a Strider.”

Dirk first takes his inanimate friend’s fist and bumps it with his own, then pulls Lil’ Cal into his chest, chuckling. He turns to Jake and gives him a smug little smile, full of good humor. “Did you sleep well, bro?”

"Pretty good. I had sort of a weird dream, but it was alright." Jake jokingly continues with, "And that was lies and blasphemy, by the way. I'm an astounding cuddler. Your so-called 'Strider swag' can't contend and Cal probably said that to comfort you."

Lil’ Cal unleashes a torrent of paps to Jake’s face while Dirk laughs along. “I find it amusing that you air-quoted Strider swag, as if it was some dubious shit rather than absolutely legit, scientifically proven evidence for why 9 out of 10 puppets prefer my cuddles to yours,” he says before hugging, then captchaloguing said puppet. “What I’m trying to say here is, Cal is a tramp and should not be trusted and my cuddles are superior. QED.”

Jake can hardly believe they're having a false little squabble over cuddling prowess, but it is entertaining. He grins broadly at his friend and would give him a nudge at the goodnatured little barbs, if not for his injuries. "Shall we explore the treetops like the badass bros we are? Perhaps after, you can use a cold pack on some of those bruises."

“Stop fussing, Nurse English,” Dirk groans, rolling his eyes. But he puts his hand on Jake’s shoulder and squeezes as a stealthy show of his appreciation and affection for his best friend and the way he looks after others. He starts walking towards a platform so they can ascend to the canopy village. “Shit, let’s be Tarzan.”

"You don't have to tell me twice." Jake practically bounds ahead of Dirk and onto one of the platforms, if only to help his friend onto the canopy because of those pesky injuries. Apparently, that friendly heart to heart before their rest seriously cheered him up so he can concentrate back on the search of epic adventures.

Dirk follows Jake onto the makeshift elevator and grabs hold of a section of the rope, handing part of it to his friend. He doesn’t think that he can pull them both up, especially with his achy body, and he figures Jake will help out. 

When they arrive at the top of the pulley, Dirk steps off onto a wooden path that appears to connect all of the buildings nestled in the trees together. It is like a pedestrian superhighway, with bridges and exits and shit. And there are really a lot of wood-and-leaves houses and shops and who knows what else. Clearly these Chameleons are idiot savants at engineering. “Where to?”

"My adventurer's intuition says..." Jake trails off for a second to glance around. He quickly points in a direction and begins walking. "That way!"

Of course Jake would pick one of the few rope bridge constructions around. It's all the more adventurous? He confidently steps on the bits of wood suspended between the trees. A modest distance away, one of the larger Chameleons notices the trek and begins running over, nyuming in a distressed fashion.

“Jake,” Dirk starts, tone quickly taking on a tinge of panic as he friend clomps his way over to the scariest looking part of the canopy path and, like the fearless idiot he is always pretending to be, starts to stomp across the rope bridge.

“Jake! Your weight is significantly greater than these Chameleons and it is unlikely they designed their structures with you in mind. Please get off that thing,” he half demands, half pleads. The Chameleon is still running and nyuming up a storm, eyes spinning wildly. Dirk hovers close but doesn’t actually step on the roped steps, all the while looking like a husband whose wife is about to give birth. Except Jake is going to fall to his death rather than pop out some cute offspring.

"Huh?" Jake stops and turns slightly to his best bro. He's quickly distracted by a not so reassuring creak of the wood under him. There might just be some maintenance issues as well. Yeah, he should probably remove himself from the bridge.

Turning entirely and walking towards Dirk, Jake hears the ropes creak slightly as well. A snapping sound from the wood has him picking up the pace. He's almost back to the safer area when one of the pieces of wood has had enough and Jake's foot collapses it, almost tripping him up from his foot dangling in the new gap of the bridge. Now he's getting a view of the distance to the ground. That's a height he'd prefer not to test.


	6. In which Jake and Dirk meet the best cult ever.

“Jake!” Dirk shouts, legitimately panicking now as he hears the groaning ropes and breaking wood. He tries to keep his cool but when Jake’s foot goes through the wood, he nearly shrieks and frantically starts looking around for a way to get Jake off the bridge without causing more strain to the clearly unstable construction. The Chameleon is next to him now, pogoing spastically with nyums of alarm. Dirk pushes it away, ready to grab a vine and swing like motherfucking Indiana Jones to save Jake— his injuries be damned— but the reckless douchebag is nearly back to the platform. Sweet baby Jesus, thank you.

Jake pulls his foot out of the hole and steps over it. He makes it back to safety, which relieves the hell out of Dirk. One of the ropes appears to be losing its structural integrity and probably would've gone the way of that wood.

Dirk grabs Jake as soon as he is close enough, fingers digging into his friend’s arms as he pulls him farther from the deathtrap and into an almost embrace. “You are the biggest fucking idiot I’ve ever met, did you know that?” He scowls, voice filled with both relief and anger.

"Perhaps you should choose which way to go?" Jake asks, looking understandably sheepish.

Dirk lets go and crossly turns to start walking in a different direction; his worry has turned into irritation that Jake would have done something that thoughtless— and it’s only made worse by the fact that it is a hypocritical anger, given his behavior in the mountain. “I’m going to talk to some consorts to see if they keep written records anywhere.”

Definitely feeling some guilt at making his injured friend worry, Jake looks at the Chameleon with a small frown for his own recklessness. "Sorry about that, fellow."

He follows after Dirk, wondering if he should apologize, but he doesn't see the problem since he's alright and he certainly wouldn't go down so easy. Stuff like that happened on the island plenty. Well, not with a bridge or anything, but just precarious situations in general. Dirk's always protective of everyone, so that's probably the biggest issue. He's not used to seeing Jake do reckless things in person, so he excessively worries.

It is easier for Dirk to calm down when he ignores Jake, so he just continues walking in silence. He isn’t really mad anymore, it was just that seeing Jake in actual danger gave him flashbacks—

“The Page is dead!” The black carapaces said in hushed, excited voices. But they spoke loud enough for Dirk, standing at the window of his room on Derse, surreptitiously awake and watching, to hear. “Poisoned in his sleep!”

And then, before he could even properly mourn Jake, the fervor grew. “The Maid is dead! Stabbed!”

And Dirk looked out in the direction of Prospit— orbiting so far from him, through a ring of meteors and planets— and felt so helpless, wishing there was some way he could have protected his best friends.

Honestly, he knows it’s silly to get so worried about Jake; he is sure the boy got into near death situations all the time on hellmurder island. He just didn’t want to think about what he would do if something happened while he was there, once again failing to save Jake just like he failed before.

Sighing quietly to himself, Jake silently trudges after his friend like a kid that was caught for attempts to pilfer baked goods. He wasn't intending to distress Dirk just by doing his usual thing of trial and error, full of improv straight off the cuff and sometimes with optional guns blazing. Strider really should chill.

Then again, unlike the others, he can't come back if he dies because of that dead dream self business. Dirk's probably all bent out of shape after that. First they whallop each other like crazy, then Jake starts marching around with his usual swagger in places that probably deserve more caution than he gives them. It's just sort of in his nature to do things like that since no one's really told him not to or anything. Jake is about to speak up, but... what's going on over there?

Dirk pushes the thoughts aside for now. He is approaching a building that had caught his eye when he first looked around the canopy; it is large compared to the other structures and strangely decorated. The wooden exterior is covered with little symbols that look familiar, but he can’t quite place them. Outside, there is a small group of Chameleons. Wrapped around their bodies and bunched on top of their heads, they are all wearing emerald green and white... bedspreads? He raises an eyebrow at Jake, as the consorts swivel their eyes to the two and nyum seriously.

“Hark! Ye have reached the inner sanctum of the Cult of Living Pictures!” If Dirk’s eyebrow goes any higher, it is going to fly off his face. Living pictures? Like... movies? The Chameleons have established a religion based on Jake’s shitty movies? Fuuuuuck.

He figures that they must have gotten into Jake’s room at some point, taken his sheets and movies and alchemized them to distribute among consort villages.

Dirk stares at his friend, wondering what he thought about this ridiculous situation. Knowing Jake, he's probably enjoying it.

Jake bites his bottom lip, trying his absolute best not to burst out into a ridiculous giggle fit at this inexplicable situation. There's an entire cult to his rad movie collection! Garbed in bedsheets, too! That's just one of the most hilarious and yet wonderful things ever. That cheers him up from the mild worries immediately. What sort of movie do the Chameleons have a preference for, anyway?

He slightly leans towards Dirk, still grinning at the cult members and shaking with repressed laughter, managing to say, "Strider. This moment is... so goddamn sensational, I don't even know how to describe it."

Dirk keeps a straight face as he whispers back, “I would describe it as horrific and shameful. You have probably polluted these pitiable, dim-witted animals with your garbage examples of pop culture.”

The cult members nyum sternly, looking extremely serious— it’s absolutely ridiculous with their linen garb. Dirk tries his best to hold back a laugh but it dissolves into an extended “sneeeerk”.

“Ahem,” says a cultist, who is clearly unsure what to make of these shaking human creatures. “If you would like to enter the sacred temple here, you’ve got to put on a Shroud of Ivory Beasts.”

Dirk manages to pull himself together enough to accept the sheets. He hands one to Jake and wraps the other around his head and shoulders, biting the inside of his cheek to keep his face straight. He really does want to see the inside of the “temple”— it’s as fascinating as it is hilarious that the Chameleons established a cult based on Jake's interests.

Jake also drapes himself in the appropriate "garb" and it's actually pretty comforting in a totally dorky way. Sure, it's an alchemized version, but they're still the bedsheets his grandmother had left however long ago it had been. This is so bizarre to think that there's some kind of weird religion based just slightly on him.

The Chameleon checks that they are properly shrouded before leading them into the building. “You two are lucky,” the little consort says while it waddles in front of them. “We’ve opened up the temple to non-cult members today because it is a day of celebration.”

"It is?" Jake asks, glancing around with interest as the Chameleon cultist (so weird) leads them through the wooden building. He passingly wonders if perhaps the building connects into the tree lower down or something. It looks like there's a staircase going down in one part of the room. "What's the shindig for?"

The Chameleon stops and stares at Jake as if he was stupid. “The sighting of the Page, of course! Someone thought they saw him riding through the sky on his magical fire of Hope. It is truly an important day if they weren’t making that up!” After this, the consort grumbles something like, “They probably were though.”

Strider gazes inscrutably at the Chameleon and then slowly turns to meet Jake’s eyes. He non-verbally expresses his astonishment at the stupidity of the consorts to his friend while the cultist looks impatient and nyums at them, starting towards a room with another sheet drawn across the doorway.

“The Page of Hope might come visit us— IF THEY WEREN’T LYING ABOUT HIS EXISTENCE—“ It’s pretty clear that this Chameleon thinks the whole Page flying around on fire thing was complete bullshit. He is probably just in the cult because of pressure anyway. “And we want to welcome him by releasing his cerulean harem and other compatriots from their strange containers into the sacred altars of movement. We figure he won’t mind if other people see them too.”

Dirk is taken by surprise by this. He can’t seem to figure out what the fuck the Chameleon is talking about. Altars of movement? The fuck does that mean? The consort pulls back the curtain and ushers them in with a hiss. “You can stay here as long as you want but keep your shrouds on!” Then he scampers out, leaving them alone.

They are in a darkened room that is filled with television screens (Did they alchemize all of these as well? Dear god...), all playing the “eclectic” assortment movies that Jake must have had. A good portion are playing movies with blue characters— Avatar is given a prominent position in the middle of the room, with some little garlands and trinkets draped around it like an altar (oh, an altar of movement, Dirk guesses). The Smurfs. X-men. Megamind. Oh, looks like pretty much every rendition of Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones too. And some bad looking B-movie monster flicks. And comedies.

Mostly really shitty movies, as expected, but it's amusing. Dirk can't help but watch Jake’s reaction to all of this, thinking it must be like paradise for his bro.

Now that the Chameleons are a decent distance away, Jake begins finally giggling like crazy at all of this. "Did you hear them? A magical fire of Hope and a cerulean harem. That's... This is priceless!"

Jake doubts he could be any more amused by this under any circumstances. The consorts did all of this ridiculousness just to greet him... Not that they know that Jake is the Page of Hope to begin with and that he has the Prince of Heart with him, to boot. He looks around the room, calming his laughter to just a pleased grin. Man, they have great tastes in movies! Avatar's even front and center, which is just plain phenomenal.

He turns back to Dirk with that big goofy smile still there. "Do you think we should divulge to them that we're the Page and Prince? Can you envisage their reactions?"

“I can and I think that unless we want an onslaught of tongues all over our sacred bodies and requests to kiss babies and lead the people to the land of bugs and rainbows, we should keep our holiness on the down-low,” Dirk replies, giving Jake a small grin in return.

The adventurer can't help but snicker and nod at that point. The Chameleons would probably flip their shit if they realized Jake was their Page of Hope after all. They probably don't need such a high profile situation with imps and other sorts wandering around outside of villages. Maybe some of the aggressive creatures out there are even thinking of attacking said villages later. Jake and Dirk don't need to attract unnecessary attention to themselves now in particular, at least while they have to wait around for the ladies of the group.

Even if the Cult of Living Pictures was one of the stupidest religions Dirk had ever seen, it was still pretty cute. Plus it made the Chameleons way more interesting than the Alligators, as far as culture went. LOBAS’ Gators were excellent chefs but food was really their only societal high point and they didn’t give a single fuck that Dirk is the Prince of Heart.

Strider goes to sit in front of the Avatar “altar”, wrapped in his shroud. He glances briefly at Jake and pats the floor next to him to beckon him over.

Yet another event is occurred where Dirk doesn't have to "tell" him something twice. Jake immediately plops down next to his best bro to watch part of one of his favorite cinematic masterpieces. Damn, this day suddenly got great. He rests his head on his hands, watching with an enthralled expression. This movie is so fun.

Dirk is pretty content with just sitting quietly for the time being, not enjoying the movie but at least enjoying Jake’s company. It’s nice to take a break from running around too.

He pulls another bottle of orange soda out of his ‘dex and takes a sip, than passes it off to his friend— whose face is hilarious. Jake is so absorbed in the movie, eyes wide and amazed and just completely in the zone, mechanically taking the bottle and raising it to his lips without even looking away from the screen. He doesn’t even flinch at the carbonation this time.

The blonde snickers and watches the next few scenes. Oh joy, it’s getting to the bizarre alien sex ritual with the hair tentacles. He looks at Jake, who is still completely engrossed, watching the scene with intense interest. Fast as anything, Dirk slaps his hand over Jake’s eyes, trying not to laugh as he shouts, “Dude! Oh my god, don’t watch! It’s space sex! Shit's not natural, man!”

"Wahh!" Jake fortunately stops himself from flailing in surprise, but it's obvious that he's been caught off guard. "Are you pulling my leg?! That hardly resembles proper sex! Cut it out, Bro!"

As if this is surprising at all, considering Dirk's irritating prodding online. He's not going to admit it to him, but it's actually kind of nice to be bothered by him in person. It's just plain awesome to see his best bro in the flesh at all. He's just as ridiculously cool as Jake expected. He can only hope Jane and Roxy will be as cool and fun as he's expecting.

“Jake, no! Jake,” Dirk cries as the addressed boy tries to shove him off. Strider is now actually laughing as he pulls the shroud over Jake’s face in a continued attempt to obscure his friend’s ability to see the make outs. “Jake, I’ve got to protect your innocence from corruption by hideous blue space furry abominations swapping their freakish genetic material. Just let me do this, man! It’s for your own good!” 

As he screws around with his best friend, trying to fend off his thrashing and keep his sight blocked, Dirk feels incredibly thankful that Jake is so forgiving and, of course, that they are able to be best bros without thousands of miles of ocean (and typically a few centuries' time) between them.

"Horsefeathers!" Jake exclaims, though entirely unwilling to point out the fact that he technically has had sex before since that's not a can of worms he intends to open. Instead, he settles for squirming irritably. "I doubt that scene's even five minutes! There's far worse in the world of cinema!"

He would just chance removing the so-called shroud his bedsheets have become if it weren't for the fact that it's a gesture of religious observation for the cult. Still, this is fairly amusing and Dirk appears to be feeling significantly better already despite his injuries. Perhaps because they've buried the hatchet again? Jake's pleased with that at least, even if he might just have some residual little hang-ups from time to time.

Dirk removes the sheet from Jake’s annoyed face once the scene is completely over. “Protected from the yiffs for yet another day. You’re fuckin’ welcome, Jake.”

Yet Jake still has no idea what the devil "the yiffs" are.

Dirk leans back with a small smile, turning to the screen again. As he sips some orange soda, his stomach growls. Oh, right. He hasn’t eaten in a little while and neither has Jake. “You think we can bust out those rations you claim to carry along with your shitton of guns and computers?”

Jake snickers at the small growl and nods in reply. "Of course. Just don't expect anything remarkable."

He pulls several canned goods out of his sylladex to demonstrate, placing them back in for later after he's made his point. It's kind of all he can offer, particularly with the lack of a functioning refrigerator. Still, food is food and hopefully his best bro won't mind that it's not too impressive. "Perhaps we can find somewhere to heat them?"

Dirk doesn’t appear to give a shit about the less-than-gourmet selection of food. He can cook and enjoys good quality food but he mostly lives off a diet of spaghetti-os, boxed macaroni, and ramen. He really fucking loves noodles but he will pretty much eat anything. 

“Mm,” he hums in agreement, thinking about where they could heat up the canned goods. They could build a fire but that probably isn’t the best idea in a wooden building up in the trees. “Let’s go back to the hut. But first—“

Dirk rips off the shroud and pulls a bat out of his sylladex, smirking at Jake (who looks confused and somewhat startled) right before he smashes it into the Avatar-playing “altar”.

"Dirk! What the aerodynamic fuck?!" Jake yells, glancing at the sheet partition. He wouldn't be surprised in the least if some disgruntled Chameleon cultists rushed in. "Are you trying to put us at odds with the consorts?!"

Dirk grunts noncommittally and quickly takes the bat to two more televisions before tossing the weapon over to Jake. Then the unbreakable katana is unsheathed and, with a whistle through the air, cuts through some garlands decorating a screen playing Weekend at Bernie's.

"His holiness, the Page of Hope, defiling his own temple? Fucking incredible.” Dirk murmurs reverently while kicking over yet another altar. He pauses to listen for Chameleons, but it doesn’t look like they’ve heard them quite yet. Still, they should move quickly if they want to make their escape before they are caught.

He nudges at Jake to try to get him participating in this extremely rude treatment of the consorts. “Can you hear that, Jake? It’s called irony and it’s calling to you, begging you to take it. It wants you to want it. It’s practically painted itself blue and everything.”

“And need I remind you how many times you pestered me in the middle of the night, sweaty and shaking and sleepless, as you typed out your dark desires, informing me in hushed tones and oaths of secrecy of your long-standing interest in befouling the sacred?” Wow, he really got carried away with that one. He makes a note to himself to dial down the sexual innuendos; it was sort of a weird thing to do between just bros, even if it was intended to be completely platonic teasing. “It honestly seemed to border on the fetishistic. So that’s why we’re doing this, man. Now, come on. We've got to desecrate the shit out of this place before the Chameleons flip their bedsheet-covered shit.”

Jake, stunned silent until that moment with the bat in hand, flatly says, "Bro. Your code of irony contains some messed up shit, you know that?"

He smashes one of the screens as well, continuing to say, "And my interests lie more with defiling ancient ruins than temples still in use- particularly when I'm their hero. Sounds hypocritical now, I know, but they'll pin this on both of us for you being a shitmuncher in the first place, so I might as well warrant the ire I receive?" He plans to make it up to them like a properly respectable chap later.

Jake smashes another screen that had been displaying Mac & Me because, yeah, that one's just indefensible out of the so-called "crappy" films he's seen. He's not even sure why he ever had that one, other than for curiosity. It actually felt almost satisfying to smash the "altar" displaying that one.

Dirk starts grinning like a scoundrel when Jake joins him in the destruction. Poor, corruptible English. But seriously, he is really loving this bro bonding with Jake. It makes him forget about any discomfort from his injuries he might be experiencing. 

Partaking in this shameful behavior is an exhilarating change of pace. This isn’t something that he would normally ever do, but it is amusing. Maybe he should take up the bad boy role with Jake as his sidekick. He could just picture the two of them like they were in some movie, running around like hooligans (what a Jake-sounding word) in Houston, smashing in mailboxes, tagging walls, kicking the asses of anyone who tried to stop them. High-fiving constantly under the bleachers while wolf-whistling at the cheerleaders (and football players) and swigging spiked orange soda; basically just doing all the things they've both been deprived of. Damn, what horrible little shits they could have been.

Not wanting to be caught by the consorts, Jake captchalogues the bat and motions to the sheet partition. "If there's no one on the other side yet, we should attempt to abscond. There were stairs leading down, so I reckon they might just lead into the tree and to somewhere we can make our daring escape from."

Once the temple looks properly ruined, Dirk slides the blade back into its sheath. Then he slips through the curtain, thankful to find no Chameleons swarming upon them, but he can hear them nyuming their approach. He makes sure Jake is with him and heads for the stairs, hoping they lead all the way to the base of the tree.

Jake bolts down the stairs behind Dirk, almost tripping over his own feet but managing to stay upright and continue with the forward momentum in a moderately safe manner. He doesn't need to pull an SBaHJ and particularly not at a time like this.

They reach the exit but- surprise, surprise- it doesn't lead to the base. Instead, it exits out to another small layer of the village. Jake suddenly gets a mischievous grin and captchalogues the sheet-shroud he still has. "Care to ride the magical fire of Hope?"

Dirk can’t help but smile widely back at Jake, feeding off of his playful joy. He wastes no time in pulling out the rocketboard, setting it in front of his friend. 

“Two sightings of the Page in one day?!” Dirk asks in faked awe as he steps onto the board behind the Hero of Hope. His hands squeeze Jake’s shoulders affectionately. “We’re abusing the hearts of these poor Chameleons.” He doesn’t emphasize the word “hearts” like it was some kind of clever reference to his own hero aspect because that would be incredibly lame of him, seriously. He’s way too cool for that shit.

“Let’s mosey, English.” Welp.

"Doofus," Jake quips with a snicker and blasts off the rocketboard.

Dirk flicks the back of Jake’s fluffy head when he starts the name-calling. Honestly where did English get off calling him a doofus when the adventurer was clearly the biggest derp in the world?

Jake grunts in irritation at the flick, but decides to ignore it otherwise. This is actually all very refreshing, soaring through the air as various Chameleons look on in wonder. He grins with elation as he makes a large turn, lowering the rocketboard during the gentle arc to get them closer to the ground for a hopefully better landing. This whole riding a flying sheet of metal that could easily become a deathtrap thing isn't really all that awful so far.

"Ready to do this?" he asks in a slightly raised voice so that Strider can hear him. Jake plans to land in a little clearing next to the village, making the landing attempt that much simpler while still allowing them to walk back to the village with ease. It's a nice balance of convenience.

“Don’t worry about me. Just don’t lean so much this time and we’ll be fine,” he replies calmly. Jake has been doing awesomely so far and he thinks there won’t be any more close encounters of the arboreal kind when they land now.

"Here we go, then!" The adventurer very carefully continues bringing the rocketboard down. Once they're close enough to ground, he repeats the steps Dirk told him about landing last time. He's feeling far more confident this time and manages to shift it into stopping.

Jake waits for Dirk to step off and nods once he feels the shift in balance at the absence. He carefully attempts to remove himself as it powers down for the time being. It goes fairly well until he inelegantly trips while stepping off, which is to say it was a clumsy dismount to begin with. He sits up and shrugs. "I'm making marked improvements!"

“Cute,” Strider thinks as he goes to help his best friend off the ground. Except he had been trying to tamp down those sorts of thoughts because they got dangerously close to expressions of romantic feelings and he was over that. He pushes that stuff out of his brain with the pride he feels about how well Jake managed to fly the board. So proud. Except for the tripping bit but he figures Jake has to derp it up somehow or like the universe would implode or something.

"And yeah, marked improvements— on your ass. And by improvements, I mean bruises. Emphasis on the marked.” He reaches his hands out to Jake. “Nice dismount, by the way.”

"I might just get the hang of that blasted artifice," Jake says with a broad grin. He grasps Dirk's hand and hauls himself up onto his feet. "So, time to find somewhere to cook up a hearty meal?"

Dirk nods and begins searching for some twigs and pieces of bark to create a little fire with. He gathers some that he thinks look acceptable; he doesn’t really know because he was never in Boy Scouts or anything for obvious reasons. Any survival knowledge he has is based off of watching immensely old recordings of Bear Grylls. He’s not sure that even counts really.

Deciding that near the pond is as good of a place as any, he drops the bundle in his arms and bends to start arranging it. Though he doesn’t ask for help or say anything, it’s pretty clear from his expression that he has no fucking idea what he’s doing. Stubborn.

Jake chuckles and plops down next to him, helping to arrange a little fire pit for them to use. Sure, Dirk's a smart guy, but he's not privy to survival situations of this sort. He takes out one of his Berettas and removes the magazine, idly motioning for Dirk to back up which he fortunately does without any hesitation. "I can start this up easy. Watch and learn!"

Taking a quick glance to see that he's far enough back, Jake takes one of his bullets and removes the cartridge, pouring half of the gunpowder from it onto the little bundle of tinder, secured in place so it won't be blown away, that he made to start off the fire. He places the half-full cartridge back into the gun, firing it at the tinder to ignite it. He should clean out his gun later but, for now, he makes sure that the small flame takes and grins proudly as the fire begins. Guns are so damn rad.

It’s pretty difficult to keep the awed “sugoiiii” from spilling out of his mouth but Dirk manages. He definitely looks impressed though, but it is probably lost on Jake since the shades do a good job of hiding his starry-eyes.

As the fire starts to burn steadily, Dirk takes some of the cans and uses his sword to poke holes in the tops before setting them into the fire. It doesn’t take very long before they are heated through and he pulls them out with some sticks. Another quick flash of the sword and the cans are lidless, steaming. Dirk peers at them, suddenly realizing that he is about to eat food that might have been found in ruins... Kind of a dubious prospect. “What even is this, Jake?”

"Depends on the container," Jake replies with a shrug. "Some of the labels get worn off, but let's see..."

He inspects the cans, not touching them since they're still hot and it wouldn't be a particularly bright idea to pick them up to look. "One of them is some sort of stew? The rest of the labels are absent."

He looks at the food inside of the cans and... "Green beans and corn, I think. Not so bad."

Dirk seems okay with this, though maybe he’s frowning a little at the thought that this is pretty much all Jake’s been eating. He contemplates this more while he sits near the fire, prodding the stew can with his stick and waiting for it to cool enough to touch.

“Hm,” he starts after a silent minute, looking up at Jake. “Have you ever had pizza?”

"Pizza?" Jake asks. He shakes his head in reply. "I've seen what it looks like, but no, I've never had the opportunity. It's too much of a rigmarole to bring things like that to the island."

Dirk really does frown now. “I suppose I never realized just how much living on an island in the middle of Bumfuck, Egypt would suck in terms of diet variety- not that mine was much better. Mine was probably worse, but I should have at least sendificated you some Easy-Mac or something.”

"Bumfuck, Egypt? Good job with the geography there, but that's probably your irony conversing instead. I'm sort of sandwiched between... Hawaii, New Guinea, and Australia, in general terms?" Jake comments with a little snort, picking up one of the cans to eat some of the vegetables.

Dirk picks up the stew gingerly and tilts a small portion of the contents into his mouth. It’s not terrible but goddamn. Poor Jake for never knowing the nauseating joys of McDonald's, since he had been in a time period where it at least still existed instead of just being tales of ancient yore. Or the real joy of homemade, from-scratch Mac and Cheese (one of the things he particularly wants, since he actually bothered making the boxed kind occasionally). They could try all sorts of things together; Mexican, fried chicken, anything they want.

He passes the can over to his friend, then thoughtfully regards the pond; perhaps so to avoid eye contact as he says, “Maybe when the game is over and we’ve once again established some iota of normality in our lives, you can come visit Houston and I’ll show you some Southern hospitality by bringing you to sample all of the delicacies civilization has to offer.” It's a perfectly innocent offer. Yet it invokes some old, semi-conscious fantasies of going to eat around his hometown as it was before his time and having Jake go with him. There's a reason it was fantasy, but maybe the game actually can change that.

The adventurer looks properly mystified at his friend's suggestion. That would be amazing, leaving his island if only for a while to hang out with his best bro. He'd love to see all of the things he's only seen in movies so far. He knows the world certainly isn't like everything he's seen, considering he also has access to the internet, but still! He trades cans with Dirk and his face is still totally lit up at the suggestion. He's clearly stoked over the idea now. "Really? I can sojourn in Houston and your abrode and hang out and encounter all sorts of things not back home?"

Dirk gives Jake a sidelong glance and— Surprise again! His bro seems legitimately excited about possibly hanging out one day in good ol’ Texas. He grins widely, possibly even wider when Jake makes a bro-pun. “Of course. You, me, and H-town. We can culture shock the fuck out of you, rip kid-Tarzan right out of the jungle and throw him into the biggest city in the dirty south.”

Jake could be around actual, real-life, other humans finally; and Dirk could be with him while he was. He's admittedly not as interested in other people as he is in his friends and family. Still, it was a nice thought and something that he had given a lot of thought to, in the past... Even though it was completely unrealistic, considering the absolutely substantial gap in time between them. The game gives promise of a new world and a new life, so maybe they can be on a real Earth with a human civilization, no Batterwitch, and not have centuries between them. He recounts the bygone Houston he's studied so much to Jake. “We have a nice zoo in your time. You could see some animals that aren’t monsters hell-bent on murdering you. And it’s in the Museum District, where there is just tons of classy shit so you can experience some legitimate culture. And if you come at the right time, we can catch the HLSR...”

Strider stops himself, embarrassed by his obvious excitement but trying to play it cool. He practically chugs the can of veggies to distract himself. “It’s too soon to be planning this. We have to finish the game first.”

And as if summoned by the mention of Sburb, Dirk catches sight of some cyan blue beast on his shades. “Looks like Jane agrees.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright. Part 2 is done. Part 3 is going to be slower at the updates, at least by a certain point, since we aren't finished with it yet.  
> There might be even more than that much, but we're going to see. At the very least, there's also going to be a bit of a spin-off we're also going to do as some point. Can anyone tell that we love working on this story?


End file.
